Hashtag 2amt
About six and a half years ago, we started the #2amt hashtag on Twitter. If you’re on this site, you know it’s a conversation about theatre–performance, production, promotional ideas, outreach, what have you. It’s been a wonderful conversation and community–and continuously active on the hashtag–from day one.
This week, it’s being overrun with 2nd amendment supporters.
Most are polite when we point them to the right hashtags, some say “you don’t own a hashtag”–though in Twitter’s terms of service, tweeting off-topic repeatedly to a tag can be reported as spam, so yes, established topics are a thing. It’s not a big deal–most are happy to find the tags and conversations they’re looking for, and it only takes a minute. (And still, the worst pushback we’ve gotten has been from theatre PR people who want to advertise shows on the tag, go figure.)
It’s happened off and on in recent months, usually an app auto-completing the tag without giving any context. And it hasn’t been a big deal until now.
All of a sudden, today, tweets from the @2amt account are not showing up in the tag we founded. It’s not suspended, it can still tweet and @ people, but they’re not showing up in any hashtag searches as far as we can tell. We’ve tried multiple apps, multiple platforms, still the same problem. We’ve contacted Twitter to find out what’s happening.
In the meantime, we’ve been thinking about the future and whether a name change is in order. It might make life easier, but there’s several years of brand equity here. Do we shift to a longer hashtag like “2amtheatre” or “2amth”? Possibly. If Twitter is loosening its limits on characters per tweet to not include links or hashtags in the total count, then maybe–the beauty of “2amt” at the time was its length. Looks like “2thtr” is available. Brevity is the soul of twit, after all.
There’s no telling when or if Twitter will fix this. The longer it goes, the more off-topic tweets will show up. We don’t want to change the tag, obviously, but we may not have a choice.
And, of course, in the grand scheme of things, there are far more important issues than maintaining a hashtag name.
So, since this started as a large conversation in the first place, what say you? Shall we start a new tag?
Hashtags are hard. So easily appropriated or misinterpreted. During a national conference a few years ago the thread got bombarded by someone who was really upset thinking LMDA was actually NAMBLA. If there’s a brand to be maintained @2amt maybe the hashtag’s evolution is OK without losing folks who have grown used to/feel feelings toward that phrase/concept. What can move in its place that invites the same kind of late-night, serious chit-chat feel (if that’s still of key importance) but is a bit more clear about “2am” as a time vs. an article of the constitution #2amtweets #2amth8r #2amtweeting
I think getting the “am” out of the tag might be key–if it’s there, it’ll pop up in auto-complete options. Maybe it’s time for the conversation to come out of the night into broad daylight…
Another benefit is, we’re in a special filter at Twitter–accounts that also use their name as a hashtag are often bots or spammers, so I did have to prove that humans were running this way back when we started. By shifting the tag–but not the account or the site name–we don’t have to worry about that, either.
What about #talkback? Not that it’s a concept that doesn’t conjure up complicated feels from within the community but it’s a relatively well-known theater term outside of theater. Too generic? I guess the question is whether you want to try and have a hashtag that is specific only to the account. #talkback might incur the same issues as #2amt regarding distractions in the discussion thread.
Right. It needs to be unique. I think we’re leaning to 2thtr because it’s open, it doesn’t mean anything until we imbue it with meaning, it’s the same number of characters, and it lends itself to branding simply. (Where do we go to work, to play, to live? 2thtr.) The site et al remains the same, just the hashtag becomes unique.
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