# Julia as a tag in social media

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473>\
**Category:** Meta Discussion\
**Created:** [June 26, 2017, 6:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473 "2017-06-26T18:35:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jlapeyre](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jlapeyre/32/4514_2.png) [@jlapeyre](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jlapeyre)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 6:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/1 "2017-06-26T18:35:10Z")

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Searching for the tag _Julia_ in a standard search interface is not very useful. After thinking hard for 3 minutes, I guess _JuliaLang_ is the obvious best tag, in part because it is already in use.

The motivation for the question is linkedin “skills”. (I’m not interested in debating here the value of this feature in linkedin) I use this example, but the issue is more general. Searching for _Julia Lang_ on linkedin yields 1K+ results mostly about people with that name. Searching for _Julia language_ seems to add a few needles to an enlarged haystack. Presumably if one pays the recruiter’s fee, filtering on “skills” is possible. But, for ordinary users it is not.

Searching linkedin for _python_ returns two million hits, most of which likely refer to the language. Searching for _JuliaLang_ returns 68 hits. These do seem to refer to the language. But, I have no way of finding profiles that refer to the language as _Julia_

It seems to me that **promoting** a single tag would be helpful.

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**Author:** ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 7:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/2 "2017-06-26T19:21:29Z")

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How does R do it? It seems “julialang” might be best?

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**Author:** ![jlapeyre](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jlapeyre/32/4514_2.png) [@jlapeyre](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jlapeyre)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 8:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/3 "2017-06-26T20:55:30Z")

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I tried a few searches (on linkedin). It’s difficult to measure because python is more widespread than R, which is more widespread than Julia. (still R is quite popular).

Percent of hits with _R_ that refer to the language seems to be about 5 to 20. R+D is more common.

_Rlang_ get no hits (AFAICT) referring to the language. Search engine suggests _erlang_.

_“R language”_ does quite a bit better. Most hits are for the language. But, a significant minority are not.

_“Julia language”_ does far better than anything in my initial post. A substantial minority of the first few pages refer to the language.

_python_ returns, as I already mentioned, 2 million hits. I looked for a few minutes and was unable to find one that does not refer to the language.

For Julia and R, I suppose it’s debatable whether there is a problem. I think the argument for “yes, there is a problem” is strong. For python, there is clearly no problem. The problem would exist for someone who wanted to refer to the snake.

It is likely possible to do better with Boolean searches, etc.

I still think _JuliaLang_, especially as a tag, is useful. This is as unambiguous as _python_, and obviates the need to think about how to search.

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**Author:** ![jlapeyre](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jlapeyre/32/4514_2.png) [@jlapeyre](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jlapeyre)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 8:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/4 "2017-06-26T20:57:05Z")

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Yes, _julialang_ is a good choice.  
And it agrees with the (case-insensitive) twitter hashtag.

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**Author:** ![randyzwitch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/randyzwitch/32/15955_2.png) [@randyzwitch](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/randyzwitch)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/5 "2017-06-27T13:57:03Z")

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My $0.02: hoping people will write ‘julialang’ on LinkedIn seems like a lost cause. It’s not what job descriptions or recruiters will likely type, because no hiring manager is going to say “I’m looking for someone with julialang experience”

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**Author:** ![jlapeyre](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jlapeyre/32/4514_2.png) [@jlapeyre](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jlapeyre)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-as-a-tag-in-social-media/4473/6 "2017-06-27T15:41:14Z")

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Maybe you misunderstand my point. I’m talking about search algorithms and database queries. “I’m looking for…” is meant to be read by a human.

Today, a hiring manager, or whoever is responsible for carrying out the search, will find (sooner or later) that _julialang_ is in fact one of the best queries (on linkedin) for finding someone with Julia skills. She will get several hits and no false positives. She will also miss a lot of profiles that use the tag _Julia_ in the skills section. _“julia language”_ (maybe with quotes, depends on the search interface) will probably get some others. (There is in fact a natural language teaching outfit named _Julia_ that has a presence on linkedin.)

If she is looking for profiles that mention the python language, _python_ will get more or less all of and only the desired profiles. The question of choosing a query for these profiles will not reach the level of conscious thought.

If every recruiter and every Julia programmer knew that _julialang_ is the standard tag/keyword for Julia (not in natural language), this would approximate the python situation. Let me put it another way, suppose for the past year, [julialang.org](http://julialang.org), and [juliacomputing.com](http://juliacomputing.com) had had some prominent notice saying, _Julia programmers! Want to get noticed by recruiters ? Use julialang in social media tags and lists of keywords._ I guess that the number of positive hits one would find today on linkedin would be higher. This would be a great advantage for promoting Julia. What are the disadvantages ?

Of course, as Julia becomes more popular, it will become easier to search for it, but the problem won’t disappear.