The two giants of social media have been Facebook and Twitter. A recent change on Facebook’s part looks an awful lot like a Twitter tradition. Looking to improve its search and indexing capabilities, Facebook is now adding the hashtag symbol. Admittedly, many users have brought that habit with them from Twitter, but for it to be embraced by the rival giant is interesting, to say the least.
This news was brought to our attention by Digital Journal in their article, “Facebook #hashtag to start battling Twitter?” Facebook has yet to comment on their intentions beyond improving search and indexing. The main difference is that when using hashtags on Twitter, you access posts from users you aren’t currently following. Facebook’s whole model is reading only friends’ posts. This will be interesting as we watch it play out.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
