MANY Malaysians on the Twittersphere love their hashtags. It would appear that we have a hashtag for every occasion…

— I regularly use ones like #syioksendiri when joking with my friends.

In conjunction with Merdeka Day, R.AGE is running an #iheartmalaysia Twitter contest on Aug 31. All you need to do is send out tweets using the #iheartmalaysia hashtag and you might win some great prizes!

I HEART MALAYSIA!

For those of you not in the know, hashtags are essentially web tags that help ”categorise” tweets. One definition online states:

”Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.”

There are many hashtags that Malaysians use on our daily basis, and each serves a different purpose.

For example, a hashtag like #kltraffic is great for those wanting to find out what traffic conditions are like at a certain time — people often tweet reports in about massive traffic jams, accidents and even road blocks (there’s a special hashtag for that too — #klrb).

Then there are those associated to an event, such as #smckl which is the hashtag for the monthly gatherings of the Social Media Club of Kuala Lumpur.

Currently, a popular one is #bbukatwtup which is used for people planning Tweet-ups (meet-ups by Twitterers) to break fast during the Ramadan month.

Of course, the most famous one by Malaysians was probably #yorais, a hashtag created in response to reports earlier this year about Minister of Information, Communication and Culture Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim saying that social media tools like Facebook and Twitter can erode Malaysian culture.

That hashtag made it to the No.3 spot of Twitter trends (current topics or hashtags that are most talked about on Twitter).

But back to the R.AGE #iheartmalaysia competition.

We’d like to invite all of you to join in this competition and share with us your thoughts on our beloved Malaysia. If you’re not on Twitter, there’s no better time than now!

Some example of tweets could be:

1. #iheartmalaysia because I can have nasi lemak, char kway teow or roti canai at any time of the day.

2. Pulau Redang is why #iheartmalaysia

3. I am tri-lingual. #iheartmalaysia

Okay, so I don’t come up with the most creative tweets but hey, that means there’s one fewer person for you to compete against.

For the three top winners, we have cash vouchers from Topshop as well as merchandise and beverage vouchers from Starbucks. Also, we have 50 GSC double passes to give away for every 20th tweet using the hashtag (until the passes run out, that is).

To qualify for the top three prizes, you need to follow @thestar rage (that’s our awesome Twitter account, in case you didn’t already know — look for us at www.twitter.com/thestar rage) so that we can Direct Message you if you’re a winner. You can also send as many tweets as you like using the #iheartmalaysia hashtag but each person is only entitled to win one movie pass.

You have a whole week to think up of your tweets (make sure you don’t tweet it out before Aug 31 — only tweets sent out on that day will qualify) and don’t forget to space out your tweets so you don’t spam your follower’s twitter stream.

So, come on and take on our challenge. We’ve seen how you guys have messed around with other hashtags on the Twittersphere so we’re expecting some great contributions — whether funny, serious, tongue-in-cheek or just matter of fact.

See you on Twitterjaya come Hari Merdeka!

Make sure you log on to www.rage.com.my for contest details as well as terms and conditionsfor the R.AGE #iheartmalaysia Twitter contest.