Hootsuite Adopts CoTweet’s CoTag/Sig Microsyntax

Hootsuite has announced support for microsyntax to support the identity of individuals sharing the same Twitter account. They are calling the convention a ‘sig’, like ‘signature’, as in the email signatures that are in wide use.

The convention is simple: a user indicates their identity by using their initials at the end of a tweet, preceded by the carat character (‘^’). For example:

The quick brown fox didn’t jump ^SB

A company might list the various contributors to a corporate Twitter account on the Twitter profile’s bio field, so that others can associate a name with a ‘sig’.

As Hootsuite states in a post at their website:

Sigs are especially useful if multiple people tweet for a particular brand profile. They create organizational accountability and help manage workflow. A sig allows one to know who sent a tweet and when it was sent. Inclusion of sigs also values transparency, a high-value attribute on the Internet. Conversation becomes more natural when customers know who they’re talking to.

I completely agree.

And I guess that it is understandable that Hootsuite is reluctant to acknowledge that the ‘sig’ has been in wide use for some time, only called a ‘cotag’, since that older term is closely tied to the brand of CoTweet, Hootsuite’s direct competitor, the folks that originally proposed that useful convention.

We’ll have to see what name sticks for this useful bit of microsyntax. I bet that ‘sig’ will have more allure to the average Twitterhead, since ‘cotag’ doesn’t really suggest what it is for. But we’ll have to see.

However, I think that Hootsuite could have simply acknowledged that CoTweet had introduced a tremendously useful microsyntactic convention, which might be better called a ‘sig’, and that they were now supporting it. Oh, and by the way, it would be nice if you let us all know who, specifically, is the author of your blog posts. A great place for a sig, perhaps?