#Love Hastags? FaceBook Thinks the Same

Facebook yesterday announced that it was moving towards allowing #hashtags to be used in user’s posts.

Although the “#” hashtag has become synonymous with Twitter it’s already also used by photo-sharing platform Instagram and Google+ – giving users the ability to add a word or phrase to a “#” which describes their content or its theme, making it much easier for other uses to search for and find that content.

And given the way in which users are more than ever integrating all their social media platforms with each other – so that photos from Instagram are simultaneously shared on Twitter and Facebook, Tweets simulcast on Facebook and so on- it makes sense for Facebook to give users features they’re already familiar with and using.

And it’s not the first time that Facebook has looked to Twitter for inspiration – it recently changed its “Subscribe” button to “Follow” – and subscribers are now called “Followers”.

It’s been said that Facebook are rolling out the humble #hashtag as part of its new Graph Search.  Although it’s reported that it’s too early to say for sure if #hashtag will get rolled out across the entire Facebook network, given the recent update to the Facebook news feed, the use of #hastags makes even more sense.

Facebook will be looking to see whether #hastagging helps drive user engagement – many Instagram, Google+ and Twitter users’ experience is driven purely by searching for #hashtag phrases that appeal to them – and might Facebook adopt a popular / trending #hastag league table of its own?

And of course, just as advertisers and television programmes use “in-ad” or “on-screen” #hashtags for those following on Twitter, having these same #hashtags also used on Facebook – becomes an advertisers dream – a single, truly cross platform social media “hook” to get everyone talking.

The top 10 #Hashtags from Instagram

1. #love – 143,817,139 photos
2. #instagood – 97,570,915 photos
3. #me – 80,693,198 photos
4. #tbt – 75,411,509 photos
5. #cute – 75,047,873 photos
6. #photooftheday – 70,995,806 photos
7. #instamood – 64,925,462 photos
8. #beautiful – 54,570,181 photos
9. #picoftheday – 53,776,027 photos
10. #igers – 52,997,258 photos

James Barnes, StatusCake.com