Hash Tags - Facebook?
Big news! Facebook is incorporating has tags! Who cares?
Mainly marketers, I guess.
So let me back up a little and explain a bit about hash tags, at least, as near as I understand the whole thing.
Hash tags are the words or string of letters following the number sign that Twitter rolled out to indicate a subject that was being discussed in your post. That way, trends could more easily be identified, followed, and - the big thing of course - evaluated statistically. That information could then be mined for all sorts of things, but my cynical inner-me would insist that the Evil Forces at Work are usually trying to figure out a way to Make it Pay. So how does data pay? Well, you find out what people are talking about, then you find a way to talk to them about what they want to talk about and slip your message in, for example. Or, if you're a Black Hat, you say you're talking about their pet subject, but you're really talking about something else.
The point being, hash tags are just more of us sheep granting permission to social networks to examine us under a microscope, ask us probing questions, find out our likes and dislikes, and watch us when we think we're alone doing things we'd never do in public - all with our smiling, happy approval.
Twitter has had one great advantage over Facebook in the social arena, and that was in the event "moment." Twitter was the communication choice for someone who was right there right now and wanted to share a photo or a comment. It's quick and easy. And the hash tags made it very, very easy to categorize your commentary, so if you really, really wanted your message to get out and about, you'd make sure to tag it appropriately. And of course, if you were communicating via cell phone, Twitter was at a distinct advantage.
Facebook was more of a daily diary: people checked in a couple of times a day to see how their friends were doing, but it isn't the ideal for event communication, and certainly not for mobile quick notes.
Facebook hopes to change all that by allowing users to add a hash tag to a post, making the post more immediate, more searchable, more quantifiable, hence, more marketable, entity.
Mainly marketers, I guess.
So let me back up a little and explain a bit about hash tags, at least, as near as I understand the whole thing.
Hash tags are the words or string of letters following the number sign that Twitter rolled out to indicate a subject that was being discussed in your post. That way, trends could more easily be identified, followed, and - the big thing of course - evaluated statistically. That information could then be mined for all sorts of things, but my cynical inner-me would insist that the Evil Forces at Work are usually trying to figure out a way to Make it Pay. So how does data pay? Well, you find out what people are talking about, then you find a way to talk to them about what they want to talk about and slip your message in, for example. Or, if you're a Black Hat, you say you're talking about their pet subject, but you're really talking about something else.
The point being, hash tags are just more of us sheep granting permission to social networks to examine us under a microscope, ask us probing questions, find out our likes and dislikes, and watch us when we think we're alone doing things we'd never do in public - all with our smiling, happy approval.
Twitter has had one great advantage over Facebook in the social arena, and that was in the event "moment." Twitter was the communication choice for someone who was right there right now and wanted to share a photo or a comment. It's quick and easy. And the hash tags made it very, very easy to categorize your commentary, so if you really, really wanted your message to get out and about, you'd make sure to tag it appropriately. And of course, if you were communicating via cell phone, Twitter was at a distinct advantage.
Facebook was more of a daily diary: people checked in a couple of times a day to see how their friends were doing, but it isn't the ideal for event communication, and certainly not for mobile quick notes.
Facebook hopes to change all that by allowing users to add a hash tag to a post, making the post more immediate, more searchable, more quantifiable, hence, more marketable, entity.
Comments