#NotBeingUsed

After the fuss, it's fizzled out. Facebook has launched hashtags, but are they working?

Perhaps I follow people and brands that don’t realise that hasthags can be used, but I think it's more likely they just don't give a monkey's about them.

I had reservations (masses of spammy posts in my newsfeed, for one) but now I have started to think there could be uses for them after all.

One is social search, to find out what people are talking about and the other is content curation, where hashtags could make posts ‘discoverable’. Both are dependent on Facebook making hashtag searches/feeds user friendly.

Some brands have already integrated hashtags into their daily posts.

It’s hard to say if they are working well for New Look and Oreo, but the idea behind using them seems to fit well with the brand messages.

New Look, for example, seem to be testing them for themed days and Oreo shows possible use in relation to trending news. But are people searching for these hashtags?

My biggest concern with Facebook hashtags is the actual integration on the platform. Hashtags are meant to help people discover information, yet it isn’t easy to find a trending topic on Facebook (unlike Twitter, where you’re instantly greeted with a list of trending topics).

It’s for this reason that it seems to me that hashtags are more of a bolt-on than a natural integration.

Of course, time will tell whether they will be as successful for brands and their audiences as they are on Twitter. For the foreseeable future, it’s my opinion that until Facebook can make the hashtag process more fluid, it will remain a case of #NotBeingUsed.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and views about this, so please leave your comments below.

Photo credit (cc) Wired