Facebook officially announces support for hashtags

Facebook on Wednesday announced official support for hashtags after a successful run on other services like Instagram and Twitter. They’ve become a “vital part of popular culture” and since they’re already used organically on the social network anyway, they decided to make them a true feature.

In a blog post on the topic, Facebook said hashtags will now be clickable. This will allow users to see a feed of what other people are saying about a particular event or topic. Furthermore, users will now be able to search for a specific hashtag from the search bar, click on hashtags that originate from other services like Instagram and compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.
The social network points out that, like always, users will be able to control the audience for a post, even when using hashtags.

We’re told that hashtags are just the first step in helping people more easily discover what others are talking about with regards to a specific topic or event. They plan to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months such as trending hashtags and deeper insights.

Rumors surfaced back in March that Facebook would be implementing hashtags, a feature that was made famous in 2007. If you aren’t familiar, hashtags are words or phrases that are prefixed with the # symbol and are used to group together all posts about a similar event or topic.