Facebook is about to become a lot more like #Twitter.
Over the next couple of weeks, Facebook users will be able to hashtag clickable phrases in their posts. Once clicking on the hashtagged phrase, Facebook will aggregate other posts using those hashtags so the user can see other users posting about the same thing.
Facebook users can also search for a specific hashtag if they are interested in finding more about a certain topic, these hashtags will also be shared with Instagram, which was recently purchased by Facebook.
For users that are worried about privacy concerns, the normal privacy rules will remain the same . For example, if you hashtag “#NBAfinals” nobody will be able to see it unless your privacy settings are set so people can see them.
“To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about,” wrote Facebook product manager Greg Lindley in a company blog post.
Even though Facebook has three times as many active users as its closest competitor Twitter, it has not been able to keep up in real-time posting as Twitter has. Facebook hopes that adding the hashtags will do just that.
“To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics,” Greg Lindley added in the company blog post.
