It’s long been rumored that Twitter-style hashtags were coming to Facebook, and yesterday Facebook made it official: anything posted on Facebook and marked with a pound sign is clickable.
“Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations,” Facebook wrote in a post. “We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the world’s conversations.”
While hashtags are an effective way to promote online discussion, Facebook’s move to a wider conversational format is concerning from a privacy perspective. Hashtags function so well on Twitter in part because of the 140-character limit of tweets; in other words, Twitter users must think carefully about what they’re going to post before they post it, leading to less regrettable remarks. Facebook, however, is a different story. There is no real length limitation, and many users dash off posts without thinking twice. That, plus Facebook’s significantly larger user base, makes adding hashtags to posts a much greater responsibility on Facebook.
Of course, it’s never a good idea to post something regrettable on Facebook, but with the addition of hashtags, the audience for those posts could grow exponentially.
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