Facebook Introduces the #Hashtag
Since the hashtag was introduced, it has always been known as Twitter’s trademark way of organising conversations and keywords. Well, now the popular feature is coming to Facebook!
For those unaware, the #hashtag is a way of categorizing tweets (Twitter) or photos (Instagram) with the addition of a keyword, such as “Just chilling under the Harbour Bridge on this beautiful day #sydney #noplacelikeit”. It essentially provides for items to be categorised and grouped, and therefore searchable.
As Facebook declined to comment further, it’s yet clear whether we’ll be able to search friend’s streams of posts and comments, or that it may be incorporated into the newly released search feature they recently rolled out, dubbed Graph Search. Since Twitter’s tweets are public and viewable to all users, the privacy settings tightly wrapped within Facebook could mean the hashtag feature won’t be as effective.
What does this mean for website owners? An effective idea would be combining this new feature with your website by means of a widget, displaying all posts or images uploaded by users that have used your business hashtag, say #wiliam. All posts, comments or photos uploaded could then be grouped and presented, potentially as content or in the form of a competition.
#TimeWillTell #ImExcited #ThisCouldGetOutOfHandVeryQuicklyThough #GoodLuckFB
