Hashing Out Hyattsville

Here's a question for you all out there in the Hyattsville Twitter-sphere: does our fair city need a Twitter hashtag?

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, I'll briefly sum up the problem: Twitter, a vital social networking tool for disseminating local news, only permits messages of 160 characters or less. Go over that, and your message is abruptly truncated.

It might be something of a trifle for the casual local Twitter netizen, but for a journalist whose entire job is to communicate through various social media outlets, the somewhat lengthly municipal moniker of "Hyattsville" can take up valuable digital real estate.

For instance, I recently transferred to Hyattsville after running a Patch site in Fredericksburg, Va. Coming in at 14 characters, Fredericksburg was in dire need of a social media abbreviation. Luckily, the local internet culture had already established the hashtag #FXBG as the dominant Twitter shorthand for Fredericksburg. Further south, as many of you know, Richmond, Va. is known on Twitter as #RVA.

So, again I pose the question to you: does Hyattsville need a hashtag? Our city takes up 11 characters, characters which could be valuable in times of important breaking news.

If it does, I pose a further question to you: What should Hyattsville's hashtag be?

I have provided a survey below to gauge the response of you, the reader including a few hashtag options which I have conjured so far in my tenure covering Hyattsville. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, especially your ideas for a Hyattsville hashtag. Take the poll below, and don't be afraid to expand upon your vote in the comments.

As always, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook and on Twitter.