#Finally. Facebook gets into public conversations, adds hashtag support

Welcome to the party, Facebook. You’re a bit late. Yes, the billion-strong social networking site has announced it will make hashtags clickable from now onwards, in a bid to make it easier to discover and join public conversations and find out about breaking news.

Facebook product manager Greg Lindley confirmed the long-rumoured new feature in a blog post, saying the team aims to offer users a “simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about”. The first step in this process is to make hashtags clickable, allowing Facebookers who are already familiar with the hashtag from Twitter (or Google+, or Instagram, or Pinterest, or Tumblr, or Path…) to discover who else is talking about the topic mentioned in their latest update.

This isn’t the only change Facebook is making in order to draw attention to some of the conversations held in real time on the platform. Lindley says the team will be rolling out a number of new features in the future — including trending hashtags — in order to “surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics.” Clickable hashtags aren’t available for all users worldwide as yet, but when the roll out hits them, Facebook says users will be able to:

• Search for a specific hashtag from the search bar on Facebook.
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Facebook-owned Instagram.
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.

Of course, while this all sounds very Twitter-y, the number of updates you can see in a search is likely to be impacted Facebook’s myriad privacy settings. Instead of the all-public or all-private nature of Twitter, some posts with hashtags on Facebook may only be seen by those you have granted permission to see your posts. So a search for a hashtag could predominantly feature the posts of friends or friends of friends, depending on how many people have actually tightened up their privacy settings. Only posts you have shared with a public audience will be able to be found by strangers searching the hashtag.