Facebook has introduced the use of hashtags to its search feature for people to more easily track topics such as who said that funny thing about Game of Thrones, who’s currently bored at their jobs, who’s angry about politics today, and who’s promoting a show they have this weekend.
Users can now click on the number sign, readily and often used in other social media like Twitter and Instagram, to see a feed of similar discussions. For example, clicking on a number sign that’s before the words “improv” or “Obamacare” will take you to posts from users you know who are talking about improv or Obamacare.
In an announcement on its blog, Facebook said that, “[h]ashtags are now available to a small percentage of people and Pages on Facebook, and we will roll them out more broadly in the coming weeks.”
Hashtags are only the first of what Facebook says are more tools and methods it has ready to make available to the public, but it has yet to release any more information on what those other tools might be. Don’t worry about the public at large seeing one of your posts about your #badday though, because the hashtags obey the same rules that you have set in your privacy settings. That means that adding a hashtag to a post only visible to your friends won’t enable it to show in the feed of anyone else. Starting today, the hashtags become available to a small population of users at first and are widely clickable.
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