Facebook finally adds hashtags support, trending topics coming soon

Twitter's iconic hashtag functionality is now available on Facebook as well.

Now you can use hashtags on Facebook as well! The social networking giant has finally brought the popular conversation style to its network, allowing users to create and click on hashtags that their friends have been posting.

Announcing the roll-out of the new feature, Facebook's Greg Lindley says in a post: “Starting today, hashtags will be clickable on Facebook. Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion. When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you'll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic.”

Facebook users can now search for a particular hashtag from the search bar, click on hashtags originate on other services, such as Instagram and most importantly create posts directly from the hashtags feed and search results. Facebook also allows users to control the audience for their posts, including those with hashtags.

“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. 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,” adds Greg Lindley.

For those who don't know, hashtags are one or more words strung together without any space behind a pound sign. Hashtags shot to popularity in 2009 with Twitter hyperlinking them to search results. The tags are generally used to clarify or add context to a post. Apart from Twitter, the hashtags are now being used by various other services such as Google+, Yahoo's Flickr and Instagram.

Rumours about Facebook planning to use hashtags had surfaced back in March, though the company decided to confirm it on Wednesday.

Availability of hashtags on Facebook indicates the growing competition between Facebook and other social networking giants, as they step up their efforts to tap the growing mobile users and improve revenues.

What do you think of Facebook's hashtags functionality?