Facebook adds hashtags

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ’EM, JOIN ’EM: How’s this for trending? Facebook has caved and is now adding hashtags in an effort to play in the enormous Twitter sandbox. The archetypal social network even has a Product Manager of Hashtags in Greg Lindley, who wrote in a blog yesterday, "To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about. Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations." Lindley added that FB would release more related features in the coming months, notably including trending hashtags. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in its coverage, although the two services started very differently—with Facebook largely used by “friends” and Twitter for public broadcast—they’re now increasingly targeting the same digital ad dollars. Taking greater ownership of real-time public conversations could help FB snag ad dollars related to trending topics like the recent "Red Wedding" episode of Game of Thrones, which attracted 5.2m viewers and spurred 1.5m mentions on Facebook, the company said in a news release. (6/13a)