While people already tag their posts with hashtags derived from city or other location names (e.g. #Berlin, #CentralPark), these hashtags aren’t always useful: if you want to see content from just your neighborhood in a large city, or content that is local to your current position in a rural area that does not have a single, useful location name, there might not be any agreed-upon hashtag that can be searched for.
Even in cases where such a hashtag does exist, it might be hard to learn about the exact one being used, for example if you are new to a certain region as a visitor. Last but not least, name hashtags might not be unique: there are at least 30 locations sharing the name Berlin, plus several more non-location entities or people that might be referenced instead – and there are a lot of Central Parks all over the world.
Geocoding to the rescue!
Instead of picking a random name that might or might not be a good way to reference a location, an existing geocoding system can be used to encode coordinates of a location or area into a short string, or decode such strings back into coordinates. These geocodes can then be used as hashtags, either directly or with some additional formatting.
One such geocoding system is Open Location Code (OLC), which uses short strings like 9F4C6VWR+C5 to identify any location world-wide. These strings can additionally be abbreviated (9F4C6VWR+, 9F4C6V00+), corresponding to larger areas roughly the size of a neighborhood or city district.
Especially the last one with six relevant digits turns out to be useful, with a good compromise between location accuracy and area size.
Formatting suggestion
These strings could be used as-is, but are better amended as follows:
- “Geo” prefix – with a common prefix, location hashtags will be grouped in search results, and can more easily be identified as a hashtag referencing a location instead of, say, a sports result.
- While the ‘+’ and ‘0’ characters are meaningful parts of the OLC specification, they aren’t strictly necessary when used as a hashtag. Dropping these characters can reduce the string length by a third.
- Optionally, if identifying the exact geocoding system is considered useful in a specific context, it can be suffixed with a ‘:’ character, which will typically terminate the hashtag.
- Optionally, to aid discoverability, cascading geocodes (e.g. the six-digit followed by the four-digit code) can be used.
A resulting location hashtag line could then look like this:
#Geo9F4C6W:OLC #Geo9F4C
Use cases
This concept is not a full replacement for, nor can it be fully replaced by, dedicated applications that automatically tag some or all posts of a user with their current location, use geotagged digital photos, and/or use the device’s current location to display content that was created nearby using the same application. While these applications can be interesting and useful, location hashtags differ from them by allowing among other things:
- talking about your current whereabouts without revealing your exact location, by using a hashtag that for example represents a larger area of several square kilometers
- enhancing established posting routines instead of having to adopt something completely different, for example by
adding matching location hashtags to weekly photo posts - building local communities on already existing social media platforms, without necessarily isolating content from the rest of the open web, and without relying on server-side functionality, like a “Nearby” feed, that may or may not exist (yet)
- enabling various forms of grassroot movement in a community or district, without having to convince people of a
different platform at the same time - participating in conversations about a certain location even while not currently being at that location