Earlier this month, Facebook announced its plans to roll out hashtag support on its social network in an effort to promote real-time conversations among its users. Though Twitter was not the inventor of the phenomenon, it has benefitted greatly from a feature many users consider and indispensable part of the service.
Hashtags originated as a way to organize and categorize topics of conversation, ideas, or current events into a searchable aggregate. Their effective use during events such as the Arab spring, and the Boston Marathon bombing, are a testament to their utility for the public good. Companies and advertisers also see great value in hashtags, as it allows them to analyze trends and document users’ social and economic habits and preferences. This is the part of the equation that has Facebook so excited.
Facebook has a storied and close-knit relationship with its advertisers. The entire reason the company exists is to monetize its users’ personal information by selling it to various companies while raking in the dough from ad sales. The hashtag addition simply gives Facebook’s ad platform more “value” to advertisers.
But what about the users? Will the addition of hashtags have any tangible benefit to the multitudes of people whose Facebook usage habits are already established? From the people I’ve spoken with, it doesn’t seem likely. One person responded that their usage for Facebook is simply to keep up on the goings-on with a few close friends and family members, checking out photos, and not much else. Another stated that they used Facebook to network with local bands in their city’s scene, but did not see a viable use for hashtags.
Years ago, as Facebook attempted to edge its users toward sharing their information publicly (many user profiles were visible to the public by default after the company made significant changes to its site design), many users protested against the changes. As it stands, few Facebook users are sharing their information openly enough for the hashtag implementation to count for anything.
There’s another problem. As much as Facebook would like it to be so, their service isn’t in delivering news or information; it’s about connecting people. Not a single person I’ve spoken with has said that they use Facebook for getting their news, ever. It’s simply not on their radar. These users are either getting their updates from news companies, Reddit, RSS feeds, or (dare I say it) Twitter.
Are we really going to scour Facebook for our friends’ opinions on the latest #gameofthrones episode? We already have that ability; it’s called talking to them. Hey, even if we find it difficult to muster up the courage to hold a conversation, we can always just check the Facebook timeline that the company championed so hard years ago. As a matter of fact, the timeline even does all the work for us. Checking it is merely a passive activity at this point.
I am of the opinion that hashtags have no place in Facebook, just as I’m of the opinion that video has no place in Instagram. I get the usefulness of hashtags in the context of a Twitter feed, and I get the novelty of six seconds of video in Vine. The recent changes by Facebook, however, seem to be nothing more than a reactionary ploy to get users to see Facebook as something it simply isn’t.
As with Facebook’s foray into the mobile space with their failed Facebook Home software, the hashtag campaign is shaping up to be a dud. It’s still quite early on, so it’s certainly possible that my conclusions are way off base. If history is any indication, however, another attempt by Facebook to bring about something that is simply non-Facebook is not likely to be met with anything other than a decent amount of skepticism.
Perhaps we’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I seriously doubt it.
