Facebook attacking Twitter. The indiscretion is from Wall Street Journal, always attentive to Mark Zuckerberg's moves: the most used social network on the planet with its one billion subscribers is reportedly in a bit of a communication-advertising crisis (even if crisis is a big word) and thus decided to copy the hashtag from rival platform.
A character, nothing more than a simple pound sign to be attached before each word, but which makes the difference: in fact, with the hashtag Facebook will be able to quickly order conversations around a specific theme. Without it, Zuckerberg's social network runs the risk of being less suitable for the dissemination of news and advertising, specialties in which the chirping site is instead overwhelmingly asserting itself
However, the indiscretion does not seem unfounded at all: just think that a year ago Facebook bought Instagram, an application for sharing photos, which already uses hashtags to classify images. But that's not all: the latest changes made to the timeline already go in this direction. According to observers, Zuckerberg wants to implement news sharing, and the reason is very simple: advertising.
It is in fact now evident that social networks, advertising and even television go hand in hand, and certainly Facebook cannot afford to be left behind. Take for example a recent and important event such as the election of the Pope: on this occasion the updates, the photographs, the videos all circulated on the social networks linked to the hashtag #PopeFrancis. And the same thing happened for the reappointment of Obama or Hurricane Sandy. In short, a condition that appeals to investors.
Furthermore, large multinationals such as Coca Cola and General Electric are increasingly linking their advertising campaigns to the launch of hashtags of all kinds, especially on the occasion of special events broadcast on television, such as the last Super Bowl. And in this Twitter is already ahead, as evidenced by the estimates of analysts, who forecast for 2013 an advertising revenue for the San Francisco social network of around half a billion dollars. Still far from Facebook's revenues, equal to 4,3 billion in 2013, but clearly recovering. With strokes of the gate.
