The Short Version

If you write a Facebook post about looking for a place to live, or looking for a roommate, add the hashtag #housingConnection to the post. If you write a post about needing a job, or hiring for a job, add the hashtag #jobConnection to your post. When you see a post from a friend that has one of those hashtags in it, click on the hashtag to see if anyone else has posted something complementary. If they have, hook ’em up!

The Long Version

A problem I run into a few times a month: a friend will post that she’s looking for a new place to live, and I’ll think to myself, “someone said they were looking for a roommate last week! I should put them in touch. If only I could remember who made that post…”

The same thing happens with jobs. Someone’s looking for a job, and I remember someone else saying they were hiring for a similar thing a week ago, but who was it? Whooooo waaaaas iiiiiit? It’s frustrating, because it is so easy to connect people who are looking for jobs or roommates, and it makes a huge difference to the people you’re connecting.

Not to mention the low probability that you’ll see these posts in the first place, since they’re only shown to 12% of that user’s friends.

You can’t just search your friend’s posts for “roommate” or “job”, because that will catch all the posts anyone writes about roommates or jobs. Even worse, someone will write a post about needing a roommate or a job, but they won’t actually use the word “roommate” or “job” in the post. In order to be able to search effectively, there needs to be a constrained vocabulary that these “in search of X” posts use. This vocabulary shouldn’t be used by any other kind of post, otherwise there’ll be too much noise. A good way to solve this problem? Hashtags.

Let’s use the #jobConnection hashtag for posts about hiring or being hired, and #housingConnection for posts about room vacancies or looking for a room. When you use one of these hashtags in your post, your friends who read the post can click on the hashtag to find other posts with that tag.

What if you find a job/housing post that doesn’t have the hashtag? I had hoped that leaving a comment with the hashtag would “mark” the whole post with that hashtag, but it looks like Facebook doesn’t include comments in its hashtag searches. So maybe point your friend to this post and they’ll add the hashtag on their own.

Example

Alice needs a new roommate, so she writes a Facebook post saying

Looking for someone to rent our spare room! You’d be sharing a nice 3-bedroom house in Dogpatch with an artist and a teacher. Dogs are okay, but cats aren’t. Let me know if you are interested! #housingConnection

Bob sees Alice’s post and clicks on the #housingConnection hashtag and looks at the “Posts from friends and groups” section. The first post is Alice’s. The second is from Carol, who is looking for a roommate but has a cat. The third is from Dana, who’s looking for a place to live, but she plays in that weird yodelcore band and Bob doesn’t want to subject Alice to that. The fourth is Ed’s post from three weeks ago. Ed fits all the criteria, so Bob tags him in a comment on Alice’s post. Ed moves in and becomes BRFs (Best Roommates Forever) with Alice. Every time Bob visits them, they bring out the Nice Whiskey, because Bob is the guy who made it happen.

Using a hashtag means that you write the same post you’d normally write, and post it in the places you’d normally post it. You don’t need to sign up for a special site and hope that all your friends are on the same site.

If you think this is a good idea, help spread the word! And if you have benefited from this idea, let me know. Thanks.

Questions

Is this just a Facebook thing?

No, it’ll work on Twitter the same way. Or any other social network that has hashtags. Maybe even Ello. Do people use Instagram to find roommates? If so, it’ll work there too.

Couldn’t someone spam the hashtag with a bunch of unrelated crap?

That happens frequently with other hashtags, but since you’re only looking at your friends’ posts, you’ll only see the spam if it’s coming from your friends. If one of your friends is making the system less useful by spamming it, maybe your friendship has run its course.

Could this be useful for other things?

Maybe? I often see posts looking for babysitters or housesitters, so that’s one possibility, but I rarely see posts saying, “Just so you know, I’m available for babysitting/housesitting”, and the system only works if people post about both ends of the deal. There’s no downside to trying, though!