Is it Facebook or is it Twitter? After long last, Facebook
is finally rolling out the one feature that is touted to be rival social
network Twitter’s USP – the hashtag. After adding support for “@” mentions and
verified profiles for celebrities a la Twitter, Facebook is moving deeper into
the territory of other burgeoning rival social networks by activating hashtags.
A word or a phrase that starts with a “#” symbol will now become clickable on
Facebook, taking you to a page dedicated to it. This page will contain all the
posts that people have put up appended with the hashtag. The other social
network, aka Google Plus, too uses hashtags in a similar way and so do Tumblr
and Pinterest.
Explaining the rationale behind the move, Facebook product
manager, Greg Lindley wrote in an official post that, ”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.”
