Facebook jumps aboard hashtag train #abouttime

Facebook announced the roll-out of a small but far-reaching feature to its social-networking site in order to make the company more competitive in the public conversation realm. Facebook has tweaked its interface to include clickable hashtags – words or phrases that start with the # symbol made popular by sites such as Twitter and Instagram. These hashtags allow members of the site to essentially mark their post as part of a greater conversation. The hashtags can be clicked or searched and posts which include them are collected into a larger, public feed.

This type of public sharing provides users with the…