Facebook to roll out clickable hashtags in Newsfeed

Clickable hashtags will soon be seen in Facebook Newsfeed as the social network starts to look a bit more like that other social networks.

Over the next few weeks Facebook users would be able to include a hashtagged phrase, like #royalbaby or #puppies, in their posts and see it go clickable. When a hashtag is included in a post, clicking on it would pop out a feed that would aggregate other posts that tagged with the same phrase.

The move would make it easier to find comments by other people about specific topics and events, something that people had typically gone to Twitter to do over Facebook.

"To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about," Facebook's Greg Lindley wrote on the company's blog today. "To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook."

According to a Facebook spokesperson who spoke to ABC News, this was just one of many announcements coming in the next couple of weeks about ways people could join conversations on the service. According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg the company was making it easier to find things on Facebook after the All Things D conference earlier this month.

Although Facebook counts more users than Twitter - about 655 million active daily users as against Twitter's 200 million - Facebook could not match the success of Twitter at marketing itself as a place for online discussion. However, according to experts, the content was there.

They point out by way of example, that 88 million to 100 million Americans post on Facebook during prime-time television hours each night and comment actively on what they watch.

Facebook hashtags would work much the same way they do on Twitter, and  when users see a  hashtag in a post, they could click on it and see a feed of other posts that used the same conversation marker.

Users would also be able to search for specific hashtags to find more information about a trending topic and click on hashtags that originated on other services, such as Facebook's photo site, Instagram.