Facebook May Have Hashtags Soon
According to Wall Street Journal Facebook is working on incorporating the hashtag, one of Twitter's most iconic markers, to attract more mobile users for advertising revenue, taking the feud between the two social networks a step further.
The hashtag, which is already used by Facebook’s recently acquired Instagram, is used to collate posts on particular topics. For example to view all posts related to the recently popular news about the new Pope, users can just click on the hashtag (#PopeFrancis) or add it to their own post if it is related.
Earlier this
month, we were introduced to the new Facebook timeline design and the Graph
search and this seems to be the next natural step in the redesign of Facebook.
This is because currently users can only perform searches within their social
network of friends, whereas introduction of hashtags will allow users to
perform wider searches using hashtagged topics. This will help Facebook in the
same way it helps twitter: by keeping users online longer and exposed to more
ads and allowing companies to advertise products through popular hashtags, thus generating more advertising revenue for Facebook.
While many will welcome the introduction of hashtags to Facebook whenever that may be (the exact date is not clear yet), I’ll just be happy that the next time I add a hashtag to my status update on Facebook, I won’t look like a Twitter wannabe!
