First they put Like buttons on every last page on the internet, because hey, why just track you behind the scenes with cookies when we can brand ourselves everywhere, too? Now it is rumored that Zuckerberg and company, who have already destroyed engagement with twitter (and other third party apps) before, "well everyone likes the hashtag and so let's just use it for our own purposes.
It makes sense on one level, since "Like us on Facebook," is now akin to a dinosaur ad agency's idea of 'social media,' and #brandname or #tagline is now the premiere AOL Keyword: xxxx of 2013. In other words, nothing is new under the sun, but #hashtagsarecooler.
Besides, they already incorporated the @ symbol when you want to include someone's name in a status update or comment. It just isn't visible after you hit send. The hashtag obviously would be.
On another level, it makes Facebook out to be a bunch of dicks, doesn't it. Like, "oh there's no way in hell we'll let you integrate properly with us, but we'll steal your the language that makes your site unique."
Here's a mini rant for you, while i'm on the subject:
Next time your boss insists on seeing a 360 cross platform campaign, do two things. Ask if the client really wants this and if so how much money they have to make it happen, and then rhetorically ask the social media charlatan in the seat next to you to put down his tablet for a minute and answer you clearly, what kind of cross platforming can you really do when the social media sites themselves are undermining each other at worst, or at the best see each other as a inconvenient necessity? Why the fuck are we asking the consumer to leap frog across platforms as if they're interested, when a lot of them are using TIVO and ad blocker plug ins to ensure this doesn't happen?
Put another way: Facebook is emblematic of corporate America destroying idealism. The whole open source beautiful freedom dream of the internet is bullshit. Facebook is only it for the money just like Goldman Sachs and all the other corporations you Occupiers rallied against.
Do you understand that Facebook built a one million square foot compound, for fuck's sake? They're worse than WalMart.
End rant.
Anyway. The only thing nice about Facebook's behavior is, Twitter is using the bullying tactics to improve its platform in relevant ways. Think new photo filters, and Vine. Whereas Facebook's walled garden is, with each passing day, resembling the very convoluted irrelevant service it once replaced: Myspace.
By the way, be sure to like us on Facebook, but more importantly, follow Adland on Twitter and Kidsleepy if you aren't already doing so. #becausewearetheossum
For all your cross-sociel-media-platform needs, Adland is on G+ and Pinterest too.
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The hashtag isn't twitters. Twitter's users came up with that method to differentiate trending topics from common words like #dolphins or dolphins (which would bring up anything with the word dolphins in it) Its not like twitter invented the hashtag.
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PermalinkYes, I am aware of this, and I am aware that pound symbols existed on phones before, as well. People used to play tic tac toe in them. The People's Organic Usage and semantics aside, no one associated the hashtag with any other social media site except Twitter first. It became part of twitter's lexicon. Therefore, it is associated with twitter. You know where they weren't using the hashtag organically? On Facebook.
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PermalinkYo hey. The hashtag / pound symbol / number symbol which has existed on keyboards and telephones since forever isn't twitters per se... And even twitter go on and on about growing organically because users were ....you know.. using it. Thing is.... The users were using the number/pound symbol in front of a word like #foo because that made a link like this: #Foo. If it hadn't made a link, nobody would be doing it, right? Now Facebook will be introducing a hashtag-makes-a-link, and even Computerworld calls it a twittercopy. The # sign has many uses in programming and hypertext markup, but making it magically turn into a link (that leads to twitter search) was twitters thing.
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PermalinkI like the rant part
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PermalinkI like the "ask the social media charlatan in the seat next to you to put down his tablet for a minute"... It's like he's spying on some offices.
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PermalinkAny time I can rant in an adland post, it means it is a good day.
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