I just woke up this morning with a post from Mark Zuckerberg on the top of my news stream on Facebook. Normally I do not pay much attention to the stream, but then I realized something special. A hashtag… and it was linked!
I pressed the link, and noticed that it worked. We all know this concept very well from Twitter and from Google+, but so far we have just heard news that hashtags on Facebook is just around the corner, but not yet here. Well, here it is, and we are now welcome to use hashtags on Facebook as well. I thought I’d try it out myself at once, and here you can see my first post on Facebook using a hashtag!
What is a hashtag?
A hashtag is a way of linking your message to a certain topic, making people who look for posts on that special topic able to find your post in that topic as well. If you update your status writing that “I am so tired of this ugly weather.” you can now add a hashtag to the end named for example #badweather. In total your message will then look like this: “I am so tired of this ugly weather #badweather” If someone press the #badweather hashtag they will find other posts and updates dealing with bad weather and other people around the globe looking for people writing on that topic will be able to find your post in that category as well.
The usage of hashtags is especially popular during larger events such as Eurovision Song Contest, Presidential elections, World Championsships, Olympic Games, Oscar awards and so on. During such events there are hashtags used by lots of people to communicate with others interested in the same topic around the world.
It is not hard at all. Try it yourself! Add the #-sign and type your hashtag, and see what other people write on that subject. If you simply want to see what other people write about a certain topic, you can visit the following address:
http://www.facebook.com/hashtag/(type the subject here)
If you ware on Facebook, do not forget to follow Business and Faith!
This hashtag was in facebook few weeks ago. My friends are enjoying using it until these time. And many Blogs were already talking about it.
Nice article here. I think FB will do well in their endeavor to utilize (an ultimately monetize) hashtags. There is a post on my blog your might find interesting about it: http://tomjamieson.com/2013/06/23/hashtags-on-facebook/ . Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.