Facebook announced that it is adopting the hashtag and we think that is #awesome.  They are a little late to the party though.  Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr have incorporated the hashtag already. 

So what’s the benefit of adding hashtags now? And what will the interwebz do with all of those memes making fun of people using hashtags on Facebook?

Well, as most of us know from using Twitter, hashtags make it easy to organize groups of people around ideas.  Hashtags brought a new element to social media – trends. And trends are huge.  No, not parachute pants or side pony tails, but trending topics.  Hashtags help people participate in global conversations about current events and real-time commentary. 

In a lot of ways, this move by Facebook to incorporate the hashtag seems like they are just riding the wave.  That’s not the way people typically use Facebook.  However, the company may have some more tricks up its sleeve with its recently announced updates. 

There's no doubt that Facebook has been trying to shake things up recently, and it might be because they are scared.  Google+ is rising in the ranks fast, and Pinterest is still a contender for king of the social media mountain.  In digital media, the second you stop innovating, you are old news.
 
Facebook is shaking things up with these recent updates to try to stay relevant in an ever-changing industry.  Sometimes the best way to stay relevant is to adopt something that’s working elsewhere. And that is what implementing Graph Search and Hashtags was all about.
 
People want the data they are seeking on Social networks to come to them intuitively, and sometimes the intuitive nature that people are looking for comes from the way that users interact with competitors.  That too is innovative, even if it seems old.