Facebook Adds #Hashtags

Facebook has officially added a new feature—hashtags. Several other social networking services, most notably Twitter, already support the use of hashtags to make note of the topics posts.

The Wall Street Journal’s Brian R. Fitzgerald reported, “Facebook made good today on a feature that it has been testing behind the scenes: the hashtag. The move is aimed at giving the social network a greater voice in real-time public conversations dominated by rival Twitter.”

FierceMobileContentquoted Facebook’s Greg Lindley, who explained, “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. 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 Register’s Kelly Fiveash added, “However, the company added that Facebookers can ‘control the audience.’ So those with existing settings for posts to only be seen by friends will find the same controls in place when using the hashtag function, Facebook said. This can be tweaked on individual posts where users decide they want to share a topic with a wider number of people.”

ZDNet’s Ryan Huang noted, “The hashtags are just part of a first in a series of features that Facebook will be rolling out to connect conversations across social networks. ‘We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world’s conversations,’ the company added.”