A while back we had a discussion with my colleagues about what qualifies tweets to trend. After doing my analysis on Twitter I remembered that FB has also introduced hashtags in June. I thought it would be great to measure the effectiveness of hashtags on Facebook.
In order to prove the power of hashtags on each of these platforms I first had to have knowledge about the following:
- Uptake of the hashtags on Facebook
- How trends are promoted on Facebook
- Uptake of hashtag on Facebook in comparison to that of Twitter
I wanted to know whether people use hashtags on Facebook, if so, are they using them correctly (based on topics being discussed) & is it easy to follow those hashtags.
The trends column on twitter appears on the left hand side of my screen (if you are using web), and it continuously updates to show relevant & current trends. On Facebook there is no trends column. I searched various topics with and without the hashtags. I discovered that you do get results on the selected or searched topics and/or it does provide you with various relevant groups.
To make my finding more current, I went one step further and searched something that was trending on twitter: ‘#SignsAGuyDoesntLikeYou’ which was trending in South Africa and USA today, to my surprise, I couldn’t find the topic on Facebook. (I did however find a community called: Signs A Guy Doesn’t Like You, and it had 1 like and no activity at all).
After doing the above-mentioned exercise, I concluded that:
- Twitter is more viral than Facebook, therefore the usage of hashtags on Facebook is not as effective as it is on Twitter
- Facebook has not created a way of prompting or encouraging the use of hashtags.
In my next blog, I am going to try & answer the following:
- How many people use #hashtags on Facebook & Twitter on a daily basis?
- How many people use hashtags for analytics purposes?
- Are there tools which can analyse Facebook (using hashtags)?
What’s your view on hastags being used on Facebook?
