We'll take that, thanks, Twitter: hashtags may be coming to Facebook

According to sources familiar with the matter, who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is working on incorporating the symbol into its systems fully, making the hashtags typed in by its users clickable instead of a mess of strange characters. It is still apparently deciding exactly how it plans to do that though - and whether it will copying Twitter's method of using the hashtag to allow users to tag updates and join and explore a larger conversation or add in extra functionality.

The social network currently allows users to post tweets with clickable hashtags to their Facebook accounts, if they have linked the two services. But hashtags typed in directly from the service are still in plain text.

The move may be driven in part by increasing integration between Facebook and Instagram - hashtags are an integral part of the photo service too, allowing users to tag their photos with popular terms to make it easier to discover new grams and profiles. If the Instagram hashtags work on Facebook, and link back to the searches on the service, it could potentially drive more traffic back to Instagram after a photo is posted to Facebook.

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