Facebook is planning on improving its indexing and content linking by introducing a hashtag system similar to Twitter’s, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Although Facebook is remaining tight-lipped on its precise plans, the move is designed to boost the company’s advertising relevance, by tapping into real-time trends against which it could sell targeted adverts.
Although Facebook’s Friend Graph does go some way to unlocking social sentiment, it isn’t designed for real-time events.
“Facebook plans to launch its own Linkify’d version of the hashtag, allowing users to connect common themes and trending topics around the social network by adding the simple hashtag symbol to a status update,” the WSJ‘s AllThingsDigital said, citing unnamed sources.
As the paper points out, the move could be a double-edged sword for Twitter. On the one hand anything that makes Facebook more immediate threatens the micro-blogging site’s advertising ambitions.
However, given Facebook’s near ubiquitous position, by adopting the hashtag it could introduce more people to one of the basic skills of Twitter, which could in turn bring the service more users.
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