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Facebook to Add Hashtags

March 15, 2013

By Cynthia Herbert :: 10:02 AM

Hashtag support coming to Facebook.Social network Facebook will soon be stepping on Twitter’s toes as it looks to incorporate hashtags (#), long the domain of the 140-character microblogging service.

On Twitter, users employ hashtags to tag ideas and group comments about a particular topic. They are fast becoming a part of popular culture and vernacular, so it’s not a stretch that Facebook is adding support for them to the service.

According to the Wall Street Journal once the hashtag features is operational, it will allow users to tag events and trends, and Facebook will aggregate those together by their shared topic, with users being able to select the hashtag to display a list of status updates with the same hashtag. It is not yet known how privacy settings will apply to Facebook hashtags.

While the hashtag is usually associated with Twitter, it isn’t exclusive to Twitter – in fact, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook also makes use of hashtags to sort and group photographs posted to the service.

Hashtag support is one of a number of new changes coming to Facebook, including updated timelines, newsfeeds, and the Open Graph search feature.