Facebook Adopts Hashtags

Love them or hate them, Hashtags aren’t disappearing anytime soon. Hashtags continue to prevail on Twitter and Instagram, and as of this week, you’ll now also find them on… Facebook!

So now when you use a Hashtag (#) on Facebook, you’ll create a clickable link which will take your readers to a list of relevant posts employing the same Hashtag.

If you’re still unclear about why Hashtags are #awesome click here to read a vintage post on their many uses: What’s the Point of Twitter #Hashtags?

As usual, whenever Facebook does anything new (and by “new” I mean something that Twitter’s been doing since forever), some social media users are freaking out about how the move will affect their online privacy. The fabulous social media leader Mari Smith has provided her loyal subjects with these excellent guidelines:

• Hashtags work on personal profile posts, fan page posts, group posts, event posts, and all comments.
• As with all personal profile features on Facebook, privacy settings prevail.
• If you publish a post on your profile to friends only, and the post contains a hashtag – yes, the hashtag will be clickable and open up to display all other posts on Facebook containing that hashtag.
• But, ONLY friends can see friends-only posts that show up in hashtag searches.
• Public posts—with or without hashtags—are public.
• Private (friends-only) posts—with or without hashtags—are just that: private and visible to friends only.
• Even when friends include hashtags in comments on your friends-only thread, your post is still private and visible just to your friends.
• With hashtags shared in private groups, that clickable hashtag will open to show public posts with that tag (along with any friends’ posts with that tag), but posts from the private group would only show to members.
• Individual comments on threads do not surface in hashtag searches; just posts show in searches.

You can follow Mari Smith on Facebook (where she originally posted the above points) here.

So will you be using Hashtags on Facebook? Feel free to comment!