Anyone that uses Twitter and follows the world of football will have surely seen the new franchised "Premier League Twitter hashtags". No? I have, they're annoying. Here's why.
First of all I need to start by explaining what hashtags are for anyone that doesn't know. Basically if you put a hash # in front of an acronym, a word or any any formation of letters on Twitter it creates a hashtag. So if I was to do #Paul that would create a hashtag, it's basically a way for you to create a code, like a sort of computer language. If you then click the hashtag '#Paul' then it will take you through to a page where it will display a page in chronological order, newest at the top, of everyone else who has written that hashtag and will display those tweets. It has to be exactly right though, any mistakes like #Paiul and it will take you somewhere different.
Football clubs have been using the hashtags to display news to their fans who can then repeat those hashtags and display their messages to anyone looking up that hashtag. Potentially millions of people could be looking at that hashtag and then read your tweet but chances are if millions of people are looking it up then millions of people will be tweeting it so your tweet will just get lost. The people with the most followers will rise to the top so it won't help your chances.
During major tournaments like the World Cup or Olympics hashtags will have badges after them. So for example during the World Cup the hashtag for England, #ENG, will have a little St George's flag at the end of it, a clever touch from Twitter. Before I thought this was just a little bit harmless fun but now I realise it's been taken to the next level.
Someone, presumably at the Premier League, has put forward a motion that the hashtags for each of the PL clubs should have their club badges at the end of the tag. So Manchester United's hashtag, #MUFC, now has the Manchester United club badge after it. That's fine, but what about other people that want to use the #MUFC? Maidstone United, for example? Being the most self righteous club in the history of football won't get you very far now, will it Maidstone? I think this is slightly unfair, in fact I think it's grossly unfair.
The League and the clubs have basically franchised the alphabet.
What if there are a small band of people who want to use, say #EFC (Everton), as their way of talking, tagging or whatever an event or something taking place? Do they have to put up with having an Everton badge after their hashtag?
People will say well they should come up with another hashtag then, shouldn't they? Well no, actually, they shouldn't. If the Premier League wants to do this they should come up with more creative hashtags than those that anyone is likely to use.
To be fair some of them are fairly creative and fine. To use Arsenal's hashtag, for example, you need to use #Arsenal, I'd possibly prefer it personally if it were #ArsenalFC like Southampton have done with #SaintsFC. Swansea, although they've tried to be creative, is actually the worst. They've gone with #Swans. Yeah, good one, so anyone taking their kids to the lake to feed some swans and then wanting to display the pictures on Twitter will use the hashtag #Swans will now have a Swansea City badge, something they probably don't want, in their tweet. They could have gone with #SwansCFC, Swansea City FC.
I think the way around this is we start up our own campaign. Something like #GiveUsOurCharactersBack and we use the Hashtag whenever there's a big game on. So say if Manchester United are playing Liverpool the tweet could go something like this. "#GiveUsOurChartactersBack #MUFC #LFC Here's my dinner" and then post a picture of your dinner, or whatever, something completely unrelated to either club. If this had enough people following it fans of these clubs will be drawn away from using that hashtag and towards using something more specific to their club.
I'm all for clubs having their badges after their hashtag, look how far we've moved on in 30 years since MS Dos but I think clubs need to be a little bit more creative than just the four letter code which happens to be the initials of their club.
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