I was just asked what was the best #hashtag to use when twittering about DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. I honestly didn't know but a quick search and some DMs later left me scratching my head. But let me give you a bit of context before I go on with this little poll and rant

A hashtag is basically a key word, phrase or term used for making tweets or dents easier to search. They are part of what we call folksonomies: Users organize information with tags that make sense to them and not with a control vocabulary managed by an editorial or semantic "god".

The issue with hashtags though is of design and semanticity: can the hashtag, especially when dealing with acronyms, be clear, common or clever enough to represent it's meaning.

Let's go back to Domestic Violence: If you do a search in Twitter you will find the use of #dv, #domesticviolence and even #vaw which veers off so much from the topic as to obfuscate the issue by focusing only on violence against women.

Creating hashtags may be as easy as putting a pound sign before a word as in #hastag. Yet on Twitter, given it's self-imposed limit of 140 characters and space, using the whole term #domesticviolence just as a hashtag that you append to a tweet might actually be a bad idea.

In other words, there's an element of language design that needs to be taken into consideration. #DV just as #P2, #TCOT really doesnt mean anything. #TCOT and #P2 gained traction only after websites (along with some much needed publicity) were created to aggregate and contextualize their twitter streams.

#DV may become the hashtag for "domestic violence" but until then, follow tip number 9 of my Eleven quick tips to better tweeting: Use words and phrases as hashtags. So, for example: Twitter about #DomesticViolence and not just Domestic Violence. And in this case do append #DV to the tweet. The more #domesticviolence is identified as #dv, the more it will gain sense (and in a sense "branding") as piece of metadata to follow in the semantic web.