GMG Tech Talk- the Official Gloucester MA Hashtag- #Gloucester #MA vs. #GloucesterMa

Bill O’Connor writes-

Hey Joey,

I started this topic on Twitter, but I thought it would be fun to include your audience in the discussion.  This isn’t about trying to get something to trend on Twitter – its more about creating an exclusive Twitter channel for Gloucester, MA.  I just ran into a similar situation with Salem this month.  There’s all kinds of Salems out there but only one Salem, MA. Going to #SalemMa to find info on their busiest month (Salem = Halloween) is much easier than visiting #Salem #MA.

I noticed that #Gloucester on Twitter is totally cluttered with other Gloucesters – mainly Gloucester, England & Gloucester, New Jersey.  It’s enough to make someone have to dig for info on Gloucester MA, and not very user friendly.  

I then checked #GloucesterMa and noticed that @GDTnews started it and think it’s a great idea. It fine tunes the aggregation of our collective data and makes finding Gloucester Mass info on Twitter so much easier.  If we follow a pattern of posting to #GloucesterMa, we can collectively Tweet occasionally on #Gloucester #MA something like – ‘Looking for info on #Gloucester #MA? Try #GloucesterMa!’

I’m with @GDTnews on this and my vote is for #GloucesterMa in all Gloucester-centric tweeting!

Thanks,
~Bill O’Connor
North Shore Kid, @kidns

Joey writes in response-

Well it’s a great topic Bill brings up and I should just state that there shouldn’t even be a debate.  The official Gloucester MA hashtag for twitter should be #GloucesterMA and not two separate #Gloucester #Ma.  The answers should be plain as day when you click on those respective hashtags on twitter. 

When you click on #Ma you’re going to get anything and everything that anyone has used for the #Ma including  everything in Massachusettes as well as a bunch of mother tweets. That alone defeats the purpose of the hashtag which is intended to drill down your results.  On top of that with #Gloucester #Ma you use 15 characters as opposed to 13 characters with #GloucesterMa  Those two characters are valuable real estate in a 160 character max tweet.

To make it more clear-

Click here for  twitter search results for #Gloucester and then here for #Ma and take note of what it returns (you don’t need to have a twitter account to do this)

as opposed to the far better option-click the link-  #GloucesterMa

That should make things crystal clear as to the far superior option.

Thanks Bill @kidns and @GDTnews for bringing it to our attention.  No need for a poll, this is case closed, from now on I’ll be using #GloucesterMa unless of course I need those last two characters in which case the Ma gets the ax.

Oh and BTW, you can follow your boy Joey here- @Joey_C