Facebook has announced that the social networking website will include
hashtags within its set-up from now on, in order to allow existing Facebook
users to follow conversation on trending topics within Facebook.
This move is an obvious attempt to keep up with its rival Twitter, for whom
hashtags have been a massive part of its operation for some time.
With Twitter growing in popularity, it is clear that Facebook has taken this
step to try to keep its existing users happy, and prevent them from defecting
permanently to its competitor.
As a Facebook user, and having used Twitter as well, I do personally welcome
this move, even though Facebook will undoubtedly get a bit of stick for it. The
inventor of hashtags has already had a joke at their expense on Twitter.
But this looks to be a useful new feature that will add a lot to Facebook as
a whole, giving people a much easier way of giving everyone that participates
on the site an easy way to see what people are talking about.
The hashtag system would appear to be a particularly useful tool for
political activists, as it will allow people from all over the world to quickly
identify and gain access to pages and campaigns on a particular issue.
Previously such campaigns relied on word of mouth and the usage of other forms
of promotion, such as other social media sites and attempting to elevate a
campaign in the Google rankings.
Now important issues can gain traction very quickly with users from all over
the world able to see what campaigns, searches and topics are popular with
Facebook users immediately. This is a very good thing at a time when protests
are taking place across Europe.
Of course, many people use Facebook to simply keep up with their friends and
family, and in this respect the introduction of hashtags would also seem to
offer the Facebook user a great deal. Communicating with people that are close
to you will doubtless become a lot more fun if you can share viral topics, and
post and link to popular videos, pages and a variety of issues.
Tuesday 18 June 2013
Facebook hashtags: A new Way to Compete with Twitter?
Adapted from Yahoo
News.
1 comments:
I wouldn't say Facebook is competing although, one can understand this logic. Hashtags has been Twitters main draw and now that Facebook has it, people are more likely to go there than Twitter.
Its like seeing two social media management services fighting over the last client they could get.
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