I recently wrote about the vibrant Twitter community organized around the hashtagging of the airport code for Edmonton, AB (#yeg). The use of the regional tag to organize Edmonton community tweets began in summer of 2008, and has become so popular it now grows organically without much thought to its backstory.
I’ve long argued that Twitter is very powerful for community building, with special value for generating civic engagement and pride and boosting local businesses. Knowing the benefits, and realizing them, though, is very different. Edmonton’s Twitter community has really blazed a trail, and it’s worth examining its success and drawing out a few lessons for would-be imitators.
According to #yeg enthusiasts who responded to my inquires on Twitter and my blogs, local software developer Mack Male and other influential social media enthusiasts deserve much of the credit for the tags’s success (the YEG airport code, now in common vernacular in Edmonton, was not used to describe the region before achieving Twitter popularity). Male regularly updates stats on Edmonton’s Twitter community, and in October cataloged more than 5,600 locals at least semi-active on Twitter and more than 18,000 tweets using the #yeg tag. There appear to be hundreds of Twitter users using the #yeg tag as part of their daily lives, and in-person meeutps get dozens of attendees (no small feat for Twitter communities, at least today).
Read more at Adriel Hampton’s Wired to Share …
photos of the December yegtweetup by Jerry Aulenbach
Fascinating…As someone who spends too much time in airports, I need to look closer to see what I’m missing.