On March 15, the Wall Street Journal published an article , Facebook Working on Incorporating the Hashtag, wherein ‘people familiar with the matter’ claimed Facebook may be planning on incorporating the hashtag, a marker used famously by micro-blog site Twitter, into their social media website.
A hashtag is used on Twitter to track the topic of posts (eg. #ladygaga), and can be clicked on to link to other posts carrying that tag. The Facebook-owned Instagram, an online photo sharing service, also uses the hashtag function to allow uploaded images to be sorted.
Just how the function will be used on Facebook is still unknown; since the original article was published online, there has been speculations about the problems that this implementation could cause.
The Facebook group Leave Your Hashtags on Twitter has reached over 10,500 ‘likes’ since its conception in 2011. On March 15th they posted the following update:
‘Supposedly Facebook is working to integrate hashtags. Gross.’
Will Owen, a Research Assistant at RMIT university’s school of Media and Communications, expressed his doubts on both the implementation, and the motive behind this move.
“I don’t trust them to do it well.” He said. “I think it would just clutter my feed with even more posts from people I don’t know.”
Mr Owen also suggested that a hashtag feature on Facebook could be used to gather data on users, which could be used to streamline and personalize the advertisements that show up on their personal page.
“All it would do is let Facebook more easily group posts together and see what people are posting about… the real benefit is that it would be easier for advertisers.”
There is also a concern about the privacy of statuses, the Facebook equivalent to a Twitter post but without the 140 character limit. On Twitter, everything posted is public and can be found by tracking a hashtag. Privacy settings on Facebook mean that users can choose to only allow select people to view these posts.
Megan Cope, a student at Australian National University who uses Twitter to update news on the video blog she is launching said that she didn’t think Facebook needed hashtags. She said her understanding their role on Twitter is to sort posts by topic, something that is not needed on a site meant for friends and family.
“I’ve always been careful not to post things on Facebook that I don’t want everyone on my friend’s list knowing… I wouldn’t want just anyone reading my statuses,” she said.
Facebook have yet to issue a press release, stating they “do not comment on rumour and speculation.”
Discussion
- What could the be advantages in using the hashtag system on Facebook?
- Would further personalisations of advertisements be a negative, or a positive for your Facebook experience?
- Would you want to be able to search for statuses on Facebook containing particular hashtags?
For Further Reading Try These Articles!
The Guardian; Hashtags; from Twitter to Facebook.
-A tongue in cheek article about the history of hashtags and their uses
TechCruch; Hashtags On Facebook Would Open Up Exploration and Discovery Way More Then Graph Search.
-Exploring the benefits that hashtag could bring to Facebook users
Wired; Copying Twitter Hashtags Gives Facebook Yet Another Way to Sell Adds.
-A critical examination of what this could mean for Facebook advertising
