Facebook (FB) already has the feature of tagging in which you can tag your friends, but probably more than this is coming on its way for FB users. Speculations are going on that soon Facebook will launch a feature in which the hashtag symbol (#) will be used just like Twitter, to search for posts. This step will be taken to manage the conversations of its millions of users. To come in the search, users will have to tag their posts by using hashtags. At present, Facebook search works for people, pages, places, apps, interests and media, but not posts. With the introduction of hashtag it will be convenient and possible to search for posts.
Graph Search, which was introduced by FB in January this year, is a search tool where users can search for their network of friends, or information that has been shared publicly by another users, along with photos, places and interests. The hashtag feature is an extension to this search, as with this feature users will be able to search for posts as well.People who want their post to appear in graph earches will simply have to use a hashtag in the post.Though this search will be very useful for any brand, company or in when people are looking for information, but its advantage in case of personal account or for users who use Facebook just for fun seems very bleak.
Moreover privacy setting makes the functionality of hashtag different in Facebook as compared to Twitter. In Facebook people opt for privacy setting, whereas in Twitter most of the tweets are public. So only public posts will be displayed in search along with the one for which you are allowed to view. But how will the whole process of hashtag work on Facebook will be clear only after the launch of this function.
But in its true sense, the use and practicality of Facebook lies in its social networking domain, rather than search,since for search purposes users will definitely use search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Also with privacy as a major concern on Facebook, it is quite possible that the search feature won’t work that effectively. There will be a question of using public data which is not meant for search but only for personal use.
