Facebook Announces Searchable Hashtags

Facebook just announced that it is indeed launching ability to follow conversations via hashtags, as was reported in March. To be clear, there was nothing stopping you from including hashtags in your Facebook content before — it’s just that they didn’t have any real functionality. In its blog post announcing the new feature, the company acknowledges that this isn’t exactly a new idea, noting that it will be “similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest” — when you click on a hashtag, you’ll get a feed of comments using the hashtag. Facebook says its capabilities will include searching for hashtags, clicking on hashtags that come from other services, and writing posts directly from the hashtag feed.

Note that Facebook says it’s only “beginning to roll out” the feature, so you might not see it right away. (The company generally doesn’t turn on features for its entire user base at once, but instead rolls them out gradually.) Note also that the company says it’s going to be introducing more features in this vein.