#Facebook

Facebook announced yesterday that it is bringing hashtags to its service, thereby fixing a broken link that so far prevented 1.11 billion users from associating themselves with celeb gossip, breaking news, and popular memes. The company says hashtags have become “a vital part of popular culture” and since it has seen users using them on the social network organically, it has decided to actually implement the feature.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. The # symbol has long been an important part of the micro-blog Twitter, letting users connect to shared interests and trends. Now Facebook wants to catch up.

- To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about, said Greg Lindley, responsible for introducing hashtags to Facebook, in a statement.

 
The new feature means Facebook users can now:

• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #NFLFinals, #Steelers or #HeinzField. 
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram. 
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results. 

Obviously the update is a sign of the increasingly intense competition between Facebook and Twitter. If the hashtags hit it off and become popular as on Facebook as it is on Twitter, Facebook may just become the important tool for all live monitoring of any event. 

Needless to say this is a long overdue update for Facebook. Users with linked Instagram accounts have long tormented Facebook with endless hashtag streams, which in essence is the best thing that could happen to a Big Data collector as Facebook. Users have been feeding structured, searchable data for months, Facebook have just chosen to ignore it. This small update will add tremendous value to the company, especially since it feeds itself. Get your stock options ready - Facebook will rise again!