Many said it's a failure when finally Facebook accepted the social reality of hashtags. The ultimate weapon of a social network to cluster shares and updates by topics. But the recent results proves otherwise. I'm using the very recent example of #ReplaceAMovieTitleWithKavum (Kavum is a Sri Lankan sweet made during the new year festival season in April) Hashtag which trended with Sri Lankans on Facebook. Hence it's Kavum Paradox.
Twitter was the first social network to come up with hashtags and it became popular when a set of Californian Jouranlists used #SanDiegoFire to update about a disaster. Facebook launched hashtags in 2013 June and was faced with criticism from a number of digital media writers. Below are some of the criticism they recieved
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/10/03/why-facebook-hashtags-were-doomed-to-fail/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/why-do-we-hate-facebook-hashtags/#!DYvnW
The example Facebook trend started on Twitter on 12th April when SenelW tweeted
The trend was super interesting - read some of the good ones by clicking on https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ReplaceMovieTitlesWithKavum&src=hash
Now have a look at the Facebook trend https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ReplaceMovieTitlesWithKavum It's picked up only on the 13th and is equally good given the Facebook privacy settings limitations. This is the first time i observed such a successful deliberate hashtag trending on Facebook. (Excluding event hashtags e.g. #WT20 or #Sochi2014)
Source : damith.menaka
Reading about Facebook hashtags further i found out that there are some good case studies of businesses using it. Read more on SpoutSocial Blog http://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-hashtag-campaigns/ So busineeses and agencies - This is a big opportunity waiting!
