Facebook joins the #hashtag frenzy

By Steve Keenan

So, Facebook is about to follow Twitter and Google+ and introduce hashtags.

Several reports confirmed the move today, and Facebook posted on its own site the reasons behind the decision to follow the flow.

The post included the disingenuous statement: “To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about.”

Well, hashtags have been around a while. And it’s just that Facebook didn’t get around to adding hashtags earlier, with Twitter leading the way as to how to aggregate topical comments on news and events.

Google followed, and now G+ suggests hashtags, forcing you to untick its suggestions if not suitable. So this is just a case of FB catching up.

But since Twitter introduced hashtags, there has been an online debate about their use. Or overuse, as users of Instagram often demonstrate.

Here, many users go beserk on hashtags in a desparate attempt to cover all bases and get their photo noticed.

Personally, I find it irksome - I don’t follow hashtags on Instagram and prefer to ‘like’ shots based on their merits not their marketing. But hey, that’s me.

Yet the sentiment appears widespread. Long before FB’s announcement, a page was set up on FB called This is not Twitter. Hashtags don’t work here - I cam empathise with that.

Twitter is perfect at being able to find all realtime comments related to, say, a murder in Woolwich or The Archers on Radio 4. Hell, we used two on a blog trip to Spain last week - #incostabrava and #catalunyaexperience - because they work brilliantly. I’ve always treated Twitter like a newsfeed of realtime events. I don’t use Facebook that way, nor G+ and Instagram.

That’s not to say Twitter is not misused (in the purest sense). It’s hijacked by interminable group chats, sponsored (hashtagged) tweets, comps and occasionally, ahem, blogtrips. But it was the first, so I can live with that. And I enjoy the scurrilous misuse for #twoptips and other funny and smartarse reasons.

I guess what irks is when good practise is copied time and time again until the point that social media networks all start to look same-y, when the individuality is chipped away at the edges and it all starts to look like a homogenous shout fest for the individual or company rather than the community.

Facebook also starts to look like a follower, rather than innovator. But perhaps I’m getting over sensitive. Social media is all about promoting a business, like any other form of communication, right?