Facebook Hashtags: More Innovations to Be Revealed At June 20 Event

Facebook reportedly has begun sending out invitations to the press for an event on June 20 in Menlo Park that will be focused on announcing some of the company’s "big ideas."

This media event, which was strategically timed after Apple hosted its annual Worldwide Developer’s Convention, will be a high-profile launch similar to the ones the company made when it announced its Graph Search, redesigned newsfeed, and newly designed Facebook homepage.

Though the invitations do not discuss what developments the company has in store for users, Facebook did announce that the recent launch of hashtags on Facebook is part of a larger initiative.

“We will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics,” Facebook’s hashtags product manager Greg Lindley said. 

Many commend Facebook for finally introducing hashtags as this move brings the social media site up to par with other services such as Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, all of which had long allowed users to indicate if a post was part of a larger discussion. While the addition of the hashtag was no doubt a tactful way to keep Facebook fresh and competitive as a social media site, Facebook’s media event may be the introduction of a feature that will further increase the site’s social media prowess: Facebook’s very own RSS reader.

With the upcoming halt of the Google RSS reader on July 1 and the lines of code hinting at “rssfeeds” that are appearing in Facebook’s Graph API code, it appears that Facebook may be gearing up to get in on the competition.

After seeing a decrease in value in the stock market and experiencing a notable monthly decline in users among countries that normally brought in high web traffic, the company clearly is not backing down. The new changes it has and will implement represent some of the features that will help the company stay relevant for years to come. While Myspace proved to be a flop, it will likely take more years and even tougher competition to knock Facebook off the top of the social media hierarchy. However, popularity decline is an issue that any company must learn to properly grapple with and it appears that Facebook has generally been prudent in staying ahead of the game. 

Though the public will have to wait until June 20 to find out exactly what Facebook has been working on, these new changes will hopefully provide the company with exactly what it needs to keep users online and engaged.