As many Facebook users were surprised to discover, the social networking giant recently integrated hashtags—popularized by competitor Twitter—into their interface in an effort to help aggregate conversations. As has become the norm on Twitter, the hashtag feature allows Facebook users to follow conversations about a specific topic across the entire social network (as opposed to just their friend network), and communicate with other users whom they never would’ve been able to connect with otherwise. From the marketers’ perspective, hashtags allow brands to extend their reach beyond their current network as they can not only tap into existing conversations, but also use hashtags to start new conversations around a specific campaign and encourage brand fans and followers to join in. For example, a major event like the Super Bowl will have its conversation aggregated into a specific tag (e.g., #SuperBowlXLVII). Theoretically, Facebook could sell that hashtag conversation page to advertisers to create a branded experience, although Facebook has not released an official statement on this topic.
Despite the momentum with hashtags, Facebook still has room for improvement before its new features reach their full potential. Searches based on single keywords are arguably outdated, and will not serve as a long term strategy. Contrarily, Facebook’s Graph Search is powered by much more comprehensive and effective semantic technology; hashtags will become truly powerful when they are integrated into the Graph feature. How? Graph search allows marketers to learn more about the common likes and interests of Facebook users. Incorporating hashtags would allow these marketers to tap into the conversations that these users are having about their shared likes and interests. As a result, they would be able to create highly targeted micro-campaigns.
As leaders in the search technology space, we’re looking forward to how social networks like Facebook utilize semantic technology to reach hashtags’ full potential.
For more information, read CEO Colin Jeavons’ latest piece in Media Post, available here.
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