Habs own 3 of top 5 Montreal-related hashtags

Hockey rules Montreal-linked hashtags

The Montreal Canadiens are so popular on Twitter that three of the top five Montreal-related hashtags on the social media site are related to the hockey team.

It was one of the insights shared by Twitter Canada’s managing director, Rory Capern, during a visit to Montreal on Thursday.

He said posts on the site that are connected to Montreal tend to be about politics or sports.

“In Montreal it was this dominant conversation from the Habs, but then also emploi and jobs and qcpoli,” he said, referring to popular hashtags — words or phrases preceded by a hash mark that are easily searchable on the site.

“That actually is very characteristic of the rest of the Canadian market, but it isn’t characteristic with the global market. So, entertainment

In Montreal it was this dominant conversation from the Habs, but then also emploi and jobs and qcpoli.

and sports skew very high in the U.S., politics a little bit less,” he said.

Montreal punches above its weight on the site, Capern said. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre is the second-most followed Canadian mayor on Twitter, after Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who is noted for his extensive use of the platform.

Montreal is also home to the most-followed Canadian university on Twitter, McGill. (Concordia is the fifth-most followed university on the site.)

Canada’s most-followed male and female athletes on the site both have strong ties to the city: MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre and tennis pro Genie Bouchard.

In what might be a sign of its continued relevance, Montreal’s Simple Plan, a pop-punk band that came to fame in the early 2000s — several years before the launch of Twitter — is the most-followed Canadian rock band on the site. Arcade Fire is the second-most followed rock band. Both groups have more than one million followers.

Most mentioned hashtags in tweets about Montreal in 2017:

#Habs #jobs #GoHabsGo #qcpoli #Canadiens

Most mentioned hashtags in tweets about Quebec in 2017:

#QuebecShooting #cdnpoli #polqc #MuslimBan #store