Facebook recently announced the twitter popularized hash-tags to their platform to start rolling out in the next few weeks. We have seen hash-tags used on other social sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr.
What are hash-tags in Facebook anyway?
Basically you will now have the ability to prefix your statement with a harsh symbol in order to turn topics and phrases into clickable links on your personal timeline or your Page and they also make your post searchable. Facebook says that, hashtags will appear blue and will redirect to a search page with other posts that include the same hashtag and you will also be able to click hashtags that originated on other services, such as Instagram, (which is owned by Facebook).
Handling hashtags on Facebook
There are a number of things you need to know about the harsh tag feature and how it does and doesn’t affect your Facebook privacy. First, when you add a hashtag to your post it does not affect the privacy of your post. Just make sure
your privacy settings are set to Friends, for example, only your friends can view it. Likewise, if your friends search for a hashtag that you’ve used in the past, your post will appear only to them—and no one else—in search results. That way you will always be in control of the audience for your posts, including those with hashtags.
Next, if you use a hashtag in a post you publish and you want it to be searchable to everyone, remember that your most-recent privacy setting is the one Facebook will default to for subsequent posts, unless you change it back.
Lets take an example, say your privacy settings are “Friends Only.” You decide to change the privacy setting for one particular post to “Public.” Your subsequent posts will be public unless you change it back to “Friends Only.”. So you have to be careful when you change privacy setting during the new Facebook hash tag era.
