Local Hashtags for Twitter

Lately there have been a lot of interesting and noteworthy events in and around Kingston, including Doors Open, the Teddy Bear Picnic, as well as the downtown sub-station fire.   I’ve been following these events on Twitter, however keeping up with everything is next to impossible.  This is owing to the fact that larger events utilize dedicated hashtags on Twitter, while smaller activities do not.  This topic came up at the last Limestone New Media Group meetup, where we started to brainstorm possible solutions.

Initially I considered using a single, generic hashtag that could cover all local events, such as #kingstonon or #kngon.  I decided that this idea was impractical, because simple tags do little to differentiate between distinct activities in a sprawling city.  Again, unless each and every event claims their own unique hastag, a bit of confusion is inevitable.  I then thought of sensible ways we could divide the city.  As I considered this option, I quickly realized that Canada Post has already laid the foundation for us.

With that in mind, I’m proposing that Kingston Twitter’ers start tagging their news and events, with the first three characters of the relevant postal code.  In support of this idea, I’ve created a rough map outlining Kingston’s postal code zones according to Canada Post’s map.  I’ve also suggested colours for each of these hashtags, and listed major landmarks, as follows:

#K7P (magenta, RGB Hex #CC33CC) – The northwest corner of the city, which is home to: the Woodbine Community Park, Wal-Mart, Invista Centre, and the Cataraqui Town Centre.

#K7M (red, RGB Hex #FF0000) – The middle of Kingston, which includes landmarks such as: Lemoine’s Point and Little Cataraqui Creek (South) conservation areas, the Rio-Can Centre, Invista, Norman Rogers Airport, St Lawrence College, Via Rail Station, Lake Ontario Park, Richardson Stadium, and West Campus.

#K7K (orange, RGB Hex #FFCC00) – The largest geographic zone within city limits, comprised of part of the downtown as well as all of Kingston East.  Some notable landmarks:  Novellis, King’s Crossing, Memorial Centre, Grass Creek Park, the Royal Military College, C.F.B. Kingston, K-Rock Centre, and the eventual third crossing.

#K7L (blue, RGB Hex #0000FF) – The smallest geographical zone within the city is home to: the downtown core, City Hall, Market Square, Confederation Basin, City Park, KGH, Hotel Dieu, and Queen’s University.

#K7N (green, RGB Hex #009900) – While much of this area isn’t residential, and some of it falls outside of city limits, I’ve included it to promote awareness of fringe events in Amherstview.  But why stop there!  A postal code based system is easy to expand into areas such as Napanee, Gananque, Bath, Picton, Sydenham, Westport, Seeley’s Bay etc…

At the very least, I hope that these suggested tags help us keep track of what’s going on in and around Kingston. Please try to keep them in mind when live-tweeting major happenings, events and news. Keep in mind that you can tag anything, from a tweet, to a blog post, or a YouTube video.  All feedback to this proposed system is more than welcome.  You can also check out the full length post on my blog. Special thanks and original photo credit to mannequindisplay.