Facebook is working on introducing the hashtag marker in its social network according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The hashtag is the most famous marker in Twitter that is used to wrap up small conversations into simple abbreviations or a matter that is popular or common, often referring to an important event or topic. It is still not clear how much work Facebook has done on hashtag and there are no signs of any recent introduce of it in the Facebook.
Hashtag is already being used in Instagram which is also owned by Facebook, which makes total sense why the Facebook is trying to introduce hashtag in its social feeds.
The hashtag can also prove beneficial in the Facebook new Graph search tool that can quickly allow people to search about latest or similar topics without wasting much time.
Facebook trying to introduce hashtag clearly depicts the heightened tension between the two social giants – Facebook and Twitter as both are competing at the same level. From marketing perspective, having such features also give an edge to the company in generating revenue from advertisements. Facebook is recognized as more close to friends and family while Twitter serves as a social broadcasting service for the whole world.
Many people might have noticed that most of the celebrities use Twitter largely for their social updates instead of Facebook. They find Twitter more friendly and easy to use because of the features available on it.
In recent years, Facebook has copied many of Twitter’s famous features like “Tagging” people by using @ sign and “Subscribing” to people’ news feed which is similar to following on Twitter.
“Historically, Facebook has come first for advertisers and Twitter has been a nice add-on,” said Debbie Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer. “Twitter has been more aggressive.”
Twitter is expecting half a billion dollars generated in advertisements revenue during the first half of the year whereas Facebook’s total revenue from advertisements was $4.3 billion last year. However, the figures are quite different in mobile advertising where Facebook has generated over $851 million as compared to the Twitterls $249 million, according to eMarketer.
