Facebook announced on June 12 that hashtags will be clickable on the social media site, taking one of the most popular functions of social media service Twitter.
Hashtags are when people add a # sign to the front of a word in Twitter, and then it becomes clickable. Once clicked on the user goes to a page where any tweet that includes the hashtag is listed.
“Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion,” Facebook said in the announcement. “When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you'll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic.”
The hashtags will help people following an event, such as the recent Oscars buzz, which included 66.5 million interactions on Facebook this year. “To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about,” Greg Lindley of Facebook said. “To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.”
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Other features that will come in the coming weeks and months include trending hashtags, which will show which hashtags are most popular at a given time, and deeper insights, which will help people find out what the hot topics of the moment are.
