A Trending Typo as Collision “Colliides” with Toronto

Social media and Hashtags have inevitably become an essential part of any conference or event, allowing participants to share live updates on their experience, and more importantly, let the world know they’re there. Unsurprisingly, Collision, the “TIFF of tech”, got more than its fair share of social media attention this past week as the who’s who of North America’s tech scene converged in Toronto.

More surprisingly however, was the fact that despite all the tech firepower on hand, many of them failed to notice that they were sharing their posts with a misspelled hashtag. In fact, the trending typo, “#ColliisionConf” (note the double-i), actually ranked higher on Twitter’s list of trending topics in Toronto than the correct spelling.

Maybe attendees were too focused on some of the celebrity speakers, such as Seth Rogan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timbaland, Akon, and Canada’s own Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. More likely, Twitter users looking to tap into the discussion simply clicked the first trending hashtag that populated when they started typing and didn’t bother to check the spelling, because why would they?

Despite the ironically un-tech-savvy gaffe, the more than 25,000 participants came to Toronto from some 125 different countries, making this year’s iteration of the conference its largest to-date.

The conference is in its fifth year, and while many questioned why it was being held in Toronto and not San Francisco or another tech hub south of the border, Paddy Cosgrave, the event’s founder and CEO, said “Toronto has a vibrant tech scene which is why the city was chosen.”

Note: Goldman Communications was on hand for the conference and, thankfully, found the right hashtag.