Facebook CEO and co-founder wears a #H T-shirt to significy his support for HASHTAGS like those used by Twitter (Click Image To Enlarge)
On March 14, 2013, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Facebook is working on incorporating the hashtag, one of Twitter's most iconic markers, into its service by using the "#" symbol as a way to group conversations,
said people familiar with the matter. It is unclear how far along Facebook's work on the hashtag is and the feature isn't likely to be introduced imminently, these people said.
On short-messaging service Twitter, the hashtag—a word or phrase preceded by the "#" pound symbol—is a way for people to collate many Twitter messages about a single news event or topic, like the selection of the Pope (#PopeFrancis). The hashtag is closely associated with Twitter, and fans of the service use the hashtag as short-form creative expression.
Facebook is testing whether to follow Twitter's lead and allow users to click on a hashtag to pull up all posts about similar topics or events so it can quickly index conversations around trending topics and build those conversations up, giving users more reason to stay logged in and see more ads. Instagram, which Facebook acquired last year, already uses hashtags, allowing users to sort photos by the symbol.
Facebook's work on a hashtag is a sign of the heightening battle between Facebook and Twitter, as both compete for mobile users and fight for advertising dollars. For years, Twitter and Facebook seemed to occupy different poles of the social-media spectrum. While Facebook was the home of close friends and family, Twitter was the real-time broadcasting device for the rest of the world.
Facebook has now increasingly moved onto Twitter's turf. The Menlo Park, Calif., social network is prodding users to share more content with the public. In recent years it has mirrored some of Twitter's features by creating "subscriber" lists for users, and allowing people to tag celebrities and brands with the "@" sign.
And while closely held Twitter is a fraction of Facebook's size, it is competing with Facebook for mobile and online advertisers, especially as some advertisers flock to Twitter to advertise against real-time moments. Twitter has bulked up its sales staff and released more advertiser-friendly products. Last month, Twitter opened its ads platform to third-party partners so that advertisers do not have to directly buy ads from Twitter.
Debbie Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer said.
"Historically, Facebook has come first for advertisers and Twitter has been a nice add-on. Twitter has been more aggressive."
Twitter is expected to make about half a billion dollars in advertising revenue this year, according to eMarketer. Facebook generated $4.3 billion last year from advertising.
The gap is narrower in mobile advertising, where Twitter is expected to make $249 million this year, versus Facebook's $851 million, according to eMarketer.
Twitter users came up with the hashtag more than five years ago as a way for people to collect tweets on a favorite topic, like a news event or interest groups. Hashtags also have morphed into shorthands for cultural memes, helping to catapult Twitter into the public eye. For example, commentary about actor Charlie Sheen's 2011 publicity campaign against his bosses from the television series "Two and Half Men" was commonly appended with the hashtag "#winning."
The hashtag also plays a key role in Twitter's moneymaking efforts. The San Francisco startup encourages companies like Coca-Cola and General Electric to invent hashtags as a secondary brand for their marketing messages both on Twitter and in other types of marketing.
Twitter last month said half of the 52 national TV commercials that aired during the Super Bowl included a hashtag in the ad. For example, Paramount Farms Inc.'s Wonderful Pistachios brand created the hashtag #CrackinStyle and flashed it on screen during its Super Bowl ad featuring Psy, the singer behind the "Gangnam Style" viral online video.
Hashtag Facebook
When Facebook introduces the hashtag, it will transform the way people use the platform and, importantly for marketers, the way users engage with brands. The implications of this change have yet to be deeply explored by social media markers. It remains to be seen how open the hashtag network will be, but a Facebook with hashtags could have major implications for how brand marketers work with Facebook.
Brand mentions
Previously, brands were only alerted to mentions of their brand name either via users commenting on brand pages or tagging brands in status updates (only users with public settings). Now, conceivably, brands will be constantly tagged in millions of conversations via Facebook, meaning not only will brand marketers have access to many times the volume of data currently available to do with what they want, they will also be able to encourage more real time conversation, and influence millions more conversations on social media.
Traditional vs. social marketing becomes more blurred
As Adweek notes, traditional media campaigns have ramped up efforts to encourage users to engage via hashtags on Twitter; now brand marketers will be able to encourage conversations on Facebook, introducing the hashtag to millions more users. Twitter is typically much less popular than Facebook, with approximately 400 million Twitter users versus an estimated 1 billion on Facebook.
Why now?
Zuckerberg may have fallen in love with hashtags after the famous $1 billion buy out of Instagram in 2012, and as many of you would see in your feed, any friend sending Instagram content to Facebook usually carries a litany of useless hashtags on their update, links currently not clickable. However, many questions remain, as Facebook still has yet to officially confirm the move to hashtags, let alone how the new Facebook ecosystem will work.
What will Facebook hashtags mean for person-to-brand interaction?
Firstly, will brands be able to reply to users in the new Facebook hashtag stream? (Along with other users, as is the case with Twitter.) If the answer is yes, this will create a lot of extra work for those working with and on behalf of brands on Facebook.
Secondly, what does this mean for brand pages on Facebook: will the brand page fall in prominence, and if so, will that leave brands who have invested millions of dollars to build massive communities on Facebook worse off?
Alternatively, will brands on Facebook be able to have more user-brand conversations in real time? What implications could this have with brand marketers providing customer service via social media?
How do hashtags tie into the wider Facebook strategy?
It will be also interesting to see how Facebook's layout and newsfeed changes, along with Graph Search, all tie into the new, more open and flexible Facebook and what Mark Zuckerberg's strategy will be to sell more advertising. Will Facebook introduce 'sponsored hashtags' and trends, and move in on Twitter's lucrative 'native' ad products?
How will hashtags change user behaviour?
Also worth keeping an eye on is how these changes might discourage users away from the world's largest social network and toward other platforms. Will the introduction of hasthtags render Twitter irrelevant?
There is no doubt about it: Zuckerberg is making another big gamble with his NASDAQ-listed internet giant. The network's most interesting days are clearly still ahead.
COMMENTARY: I am a Twitter user and I use the # hashtag symbol regularly so that my followers and non-followers alike can find my Twitter updates when they conduct searches on Twitter. This is a huge advantage if you are trying to narrow your search to a specific keyword as Google does in their searches. The hashtag will prove to be a convenient way for Facebook users to do the same thing that Twitter users now take for granted.
Conversations collect around hashtags. If you want to start a conversation, introduce a hashtag. If you want to join a conversation already happening on Facebook, find the hashtag that's being used. Hashtags are commonly used at conferences, for television shows, and in discussion of major news events. Preparing newsfeed updates with the right hashtag is a great way to send your message not just to your Facebook fans, but to everyone who is tuned into that conversation. Hashtags are most powerful when you use them judiciously. On Twitter, including more than two in a tweet is probably overkill. It is hoped that Facebook users will apply a similar rule, and only tag the most important word that represents the theme of your update.
Brands will benefit as well, because they can hashtags to determine what their follower and non-followers are saying about their brand. The hashtag will be important for brands in targeting potential customers and improving engagement with their fans.
4 tips for choosing a successful hashtag.
#1: Choose Something Unique - If you want others to join in on the conversation and be able to engage with each other, you have to use a hashtag that is more unique—not something as simple as #marketing or #webinar. If you are looking for Facebook posts about the San Francisco 49er football team, don't use something like #NFL or #SuperBowl, but make it specific and unique like #SF49ers or #49ers.
In this particular case, I could've searched for Hitachi's Ropits single-person electric urban vehicle, using the hashtag #Hitachi, but my Twitter search would've included all tweets using "Hitachi." By using the hashtag #Ropits, I narrow my search so that is specific and unique. Here are the results.
Twitter search for the HASHTAG #Ropits, Hitachi's single-person electric urban vehicle (Click Image To Enlarge)
#2: Choose Something Easy to Remember - When choosing a hashtag, it’s important to make sure that your hashtag is easy for users to remember. Hashtags should be short, easy to pronounce and spell and give users a better idea about the topic of the conversation or newsfeed stream. With thousands of hashtags roaming the social media universe, the last thing a business wants to do is create a hashtag that is hard to spell or pronounce. Users will end up spelling it wrong and this defeats the purpose of having a hashtag in the first place. For example, if you want to see what Facebook users are saying about the TV Show "Dancing With The Stars," you could enter #DancingWithTheStars, and find those updates, but it could make more sense to use an abbreviation like #DWTS.
Here's a great example of choosing a hashtag that is easy to remember. In this particular case on Twitter we searched for Tweets about Pope Francis. I could've entered the hashtag #PopeFrancis, but decided to use #Pope instead, because this is what people are using the most. It's short and simple to remember.
Using the HASHTAG #Pope to find Tweets about Pope Francis (Click Image To Enlarge)
#3: Use the Hashtag on Multiple Social Media Channels - As you work toward making your hashtag second nature for many users, try to adopt it on multiple channels. Although the use of hashtags may have started on Twitter, they are now used across multiple social media channels including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Hashtags allow users to organize their content and pictures while also instilling the hashtag into the minds of their audience. Using hashtags on multiple social media channels also helps you in two ways. First, this gives your hashtag more exposure to more people to help spread the word about it. Second, this helps people to remember your hashtag when they see it multiple times on different channels
#4: Search for the Hashtag Before You Use It - The worst thing that can happen when using a hashtag is to realize after it’s tweeted that the same hashtag is used for an entirely different topic. Before using a hashtag, you always need to search to see if other people are using it and what they are saying.
When you use hashtags in your social media strategy, the key is to make sure you’re using the right hashtags at the right time to ensure you are reaching your audience in a positive way.
By following these 4 steps, you’ll be able to choose a hashtag that’s memorable and unique. But the most important step of all is to see what other people are saying on that hashtag or topic in advance.
Remember that it’s okay to use general hashtags such as #marketing or #webinars, but it’s harder to make those effective when trying to have a unique conversation.
Use multiple hashtags if the topic is right, but do not add extra hashtags in an attempt to show up in as may searches as possible.
With over 1 billion users, Facebook could become the leader in hashtag online usage, it will help brands in their Facebook marketing, and I welcome the move.
Courtesy of an article dated March 14, 2013 appearing in The Wall Street Journal and an article dated March 20, 2014 appearing in Social Media Today and an article dated February 21, 2013 appearing in Social Media Examiner
At this time I am going away to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast coming again to
read further news.
Posted by: Robby | 03/21/2013 at 08:54 PM