It’s hard to believe that just a single year has gone by since the first tweet with the #yeg hashtag. It has become such a core part of the Edmonton Twitter community that it’s difficult to imagine what microblogging would be like without it!
If I remember correctly, I found about the #yyc hashtag while I was in Calgary for BarCampCalgary2 on June 14th, 2008. I learned from @wintr that a few Calgarians had started using the hashtag to tweet about things related to their city. I thought it might be a good idea to do something similar here in Edmonton. This is what I wrote:
#Edmonton Twitterers…our neighbours to the south have started using the hashtag #yyc to self organize…cool idea we should borrow? #yeg
The rest, as they say, is history.
A few highlights from the past year:
- #yeg was mentioned on CTV when Carrie Doll did a story on Twitter at the beginning of March.
- #yeg trended to #5 on Twitter Search on March 24th as Edmontonians were tweeting about the fire on Rice Howard Way.
- No less than ten related hashtags have been actively used, such as #yegtransit and #yegfood.
I recall at some point a discussion about how to pronounce #yeg. I think most say “y-egg” though some say “y-e-g”.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of stats for the hashtag before January 2009. My best guess is that 1488 tweets were posted containing the #yeg hashtag from November 20th to December 31st. For this calendar year however, I have good numbers. The stats below differ from my monthly stats posts in two ways: they are global, so include tweets posted by non-locals, and they do not contain related tags such as #yegfood.
A total of 32053 tweets have been posted in 2009 (as of noon today) containing the #yeg hashtag. Here’s that number broken down by month:
On average, 188 tweets are posted each day containing the #yeg hashtag.
One thing I’ve always wondered is where the hashtag is most often placed inside each tweet. Here’s the breakdown:
I think it’s great that the #yeg hashtag has become so established in the Edmonton Twitter community, and I look forward to its continued evolution. Thanks everyone for making #yeg so great!
MasterMaq's Blog 
Mack:
The statistical blog posts that you have been making are all very interesting. Thanks for being such a great steward of the community.
Thanks Chris…good example of something I’d do for myself anyway made better by sharing!
Another stat you need — how many people pop on asking what #yeg means.
Quite a community achievement! Thanks for directing me to this post – one of my favorite blogging topics is tech-enabled community building, and this is just such a smashing example.
I arrived on this page trying to figure out what #yeg stood for. Finally clicked just as #yow stood for Ottawa, #yeg is the city airport code for Edmonton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_by_IATA_code:_Y#YE