Quantt: a hashtag syntax for describing quantities in social

networking status messages

Francis Dierick
Quantter, Konstanz, Germany
{francis.dierick@gmail.com

Abstract: Hashtags* were introduced in 2007 by Nate Ritter as an informal conven-

tion for tagging content in twitter messages. Several other syntax conventions such as
Nanoformats* and TripleTags* have been suggested since but the simple Hashtag has
seen the most widespread adoption. In this specification we propose a simple hashtag
syntax extension to deal with quantities. We further argue that numbers are an essen-
tial part of human expression and often deserve to be part of the status message body
as opposed to staying hidden in the message’s metadata.

1 The Common Quantt

In its simplest form a Quantt 1 is a hashtag-based syntax for describing QUANTiTies

on twitter. A Quantt consists of a key:value pair separated by a semicolon and prefixed
with a ’#’ sign as is usual for hashtags. Besides being a twitter convention, the ’#’ sign is
already commonly used in Western culture to denote quantities. The colon was chosen as a
separator because of its meaning in natural language grammar and because it is frequently
used in dealing with quantities*.
People talk about quantities all the time in social networks: how many kms they ran, how
many hours they worked, how much weight they lost. Below are some common examples
of quantities described in quantt format:
Twitter: "I ran 5km today #run:5km"
Twitter: "Went shopping today, bought 5 pairs of shoes #shoppingguilt:3/4"
The Quantt format can be expressed in Extended Backus-Naur Form as following*:

quantt = [ "#" ] key value [ unit ].

key = alpha { alphanum } ( ":" ).
value = integer | float | fraction .
integer = digit { digit }.
float = integer "." integer.
fraction = integer "/" integer.
unit = alpha { alpha }.
1 Please register at http://www.alexandria-projekt.de
Visually it can be expressed like this:

Both "," and "." can be used for the decimal point separator in floating point numbers &
the "/" character is allowed as a convenient way to describe fractions. The key should be
Xml and Url encoding compatible in order to facilitate serialization in XML/JSON.
Initially we planned to use only SI units and their derivatives, but we quickly found out
that a more open-ended approach to units is needed. E.g. how would you describe the
concept of ’pages’ in SI units as expressed in the following message?
Twitter: "I made great progress in studying for my exams today #pages:33"
The quantt syntax is compatible with most major social media platforms, easy for humans
to understand and straightforward for machines to parse. This simple Quantt syntax is also
probably the first syntax introduced to the general public with a cartoon.*

2 Semantic Quantts

While triple tags or machine tags have seen some adoption on social networking sites,
the full semantic power of these triple constructs has not been unleashed. Twitter hopes
to change this with the addition of annotations to messages. A Twitter annotation can be
expressed as a triple consisting of a type, a key and a value. This can be written in JSON
like this:

"annotations":[{"type":{"attribute":"value"}}]

Or simplified like this:

"type:attribute=value"

While Semantic Quantts could be expressed as triples inside the message body with a
syntax similar to the one described above*, we assume that most will be hidden from the
user as metadata. Therefore we propose that the generic "quantity" namespace (possible
abbreviations: "qnt", "qty") be reserved for describing numbers. One potential schema is
the one described below, but we leave it up to the community to set up conventions:

"quantity":[{"swim":{"value":"number"}, {"unit" : "unit"}}]

3 The signalling function of numbers

A significant % of messages on twitter contain numbers of some kind. With automated

tools like Nike+ getting more widespread use we expect the amount of tweets containing
numbers to rise. For machine-generated tweets it often makes sense to hide the numbers
in metadata. But in many cases the number is at the core of the message, especially if
people are talking about some kind of effort / achievement. When I regularly tweet about
a topic it can be arguably said that "the number is the message", e.g. in the context of my
swimming training:
Twitter: "Started swimming in open water again. It was freezing cold, but I did a great
distance. #swim:3km"
By simply quantifying my effort I signal that 1) this particular effort is important to me 2)
I expect to progress over time 3) I hope my friends keep track on my progress.
Quantts are not meant to replace hidden metadata, but when used correctly can be used
to communicate the presence of number-based metadata. Just like hashtags were made
popular because of their visibility and creative (ab)uses we hope Quantts will be adopted
by a mainstream audience.
Especially in the contest of the ’Quantified Self’ movement numbers take on an important
signaling function. While the QS movement has focussed on passively capturing data
about a person’s life we believe that there is value in actively capturing a small amount
variables about your life. When starting to quantify your life it is easy to get lost in the
deluge of data automated sensor-based tools generate. Selecting a select few data points
and actively communicating about them in social networks allows social pressure to keep
you focussed.

4 Conclusions

We presented a simple syntax for describing quantities in social networks, suggested the
reservation of a "quantity" namespace in structured metadata and explored the signalling
function of numbers in status messages.