Facebook #Hashtags: How Will They Affect You?

So, it’s finally happened. Facebook has introduced hashtags (#) into its conversation forum, following in the footsteps of Twitter and Instagram.
Putting a hashtag at the start of a word or phrase then stores that post into a collection of posts with that same hashtag.

Is it a very popular feature on Twitter and Instagram, especially with advertisers, as it allows people to find others that enjoy talking about the same topics and can then engage in public conversation.

However, the introduction of the feature on Facebook has not received such a popular reception. In fact, before the hashtags became clickable, a user set up a page called ‘This is not Twitter. Hashtags don’t work here’.

Many people separate their social profiles for different uses, for example; many people use Facebook for personal use and Twitter for work or a more ‘serious’ conversations. Therefore, many people did not like this level of integration between the two. So,

How will Hashtag affect your use of social media.

Integration

The use of hashtag on Facebook may encourage more people to link up all of their social media accounts. Therefore, this could actually have a positive benefit on Twitter, as many people will probably solely use Twitter now and auto generate their Facebook posts from Twitter, now that hashtags actually work on the site – here is a great article about it on the BBC News website.

Real-time

Generally, Twitter has always been seen as an instant social network, allowing users to provide real-time updates, frequently. Facebook, pre hashtagging anyway, has always been seen as the ‘personal’ social network, where people post updates about themselves and their lives, more so than current affairs and current themes. Perhaps, this use of hashtags will change this.

Differentiation

Yet, if the use of hashtags does make Facebook more Twitter-like, will we soon reach a point where all social networks mould into one? Will you only be able to use 140 characters on Facebook or will you soon be able to re-pin on Instagram?

Privacy

Over the years, Facebook have made so many changes to their privacy settings. This new function has brought up many questions over privacy, because hashtags on Twitter are visible to the public.
When you write a post on Facebook, you can decide who sees it by altering the toggle below the post – you can change this between ‘Friends’, ‘Public’, ‘Friends of friends’ etc…

You can now do this for your posts with hashtags in, but ensure that you go back to older Facebook posts that include hashtags (whether they were auto-generated from Twitter or whether you used hashtags on Facebook before they actually worked), because if they were set to Public, the hashtags will be viewable by the public.

    Becky

About the Author:

Becky works for an internet marketing agency called The Blue Cube, so the developments in social media are of great interest to her.