After months of public uncertainty and rumours, Facebook have finally announced that their social network will support hashtags much in the same way that Twitter does. In a message from Facebook they have said that they hope the introduction of hashtags will help solve issues with searching, participation in discussion, content discovery and connecting with people socially.

Just like with other social networks employing hastags, Facebook hashtags will be clickable. Other notable social networks implementing hastags include Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Also much like with other social networks that use hashtags, when you click through a hashtag on Facebook, you’re taken to all discussions and content referring to topics stamped with that specific hashtag.

Currently, the hashtag functionality is limited to searching for specific hashtags directly (#PlayOffFinal for example), click through hashtags found on external services (namely Instagram) and composing posts directly from hashtag feeds.