Facebook adopts the hashtag

This was bound to happen at some point or another. People have been hashtagging on Facebook for a long time, simply because of the popularity of the practice on Twitter. Now the Zuckerberg owned social network has adopted the practice, giving a legitimate use on the platform, instead of just making it seem like people have forgotten where they're posting their status update.

Clicking a hashtag on Facebook will give you a list of posts from friends that have used the same tag (making it far more limiting than Twitter's approach, but typical of Facebook less connected friends system) as well as groups that are about the same subject.

Who didn't see this coming?

As Wired reports, a Facebook spokesperson said: “people were already using hashtags on Facebook – we just made them clickable.”

As it stands the only integration of the linking system is through search, but there's potential there for advertising that it seems unlikely Facebook won't take up further down the line.

KitGuru Says: Hardly surprising this. Look forward to Facebook monetising it in the near future too. Hashtag ads will be a big money spinner if they take off. 

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