In a world consumed by social media, the ways in which we communicate are constantly changing and improving. The two largest social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, have spent the past several years perfecting their platforms, regularly updating their features in order to stay one step ahead in the game. In an effort to not be outdone, many of these features often overlap.

For example, Facebook recently introduced a video component to Instagram in order to compete with Twitter's widely-popular Vine, a video-sharing app which allows users to take 6-seconds of footage to share with their followers. Instagram's new video sharing feature was announced on Thursday, June 20 at Facebook's Menlo Park, California headquarters, and allows users to upload 15 seconds of video to their existing Instagram account.

Facebook also announced the recent addition of clickable hashtags; an IRC-based concept, that was adapted to Twitter by Chris Messina in 2007 in an effort to categorize tweets around specific subjects and encourage conversation-based interaction. While hashtags are native to both Instagram and Vine, Facebook has avoided jumping on the hashtag bandwagon until now. 

Hashtags from other social networking sites that share to Facebook will also be clickable, including Instagram and Vine. Additionally, the tagged keywords and phrases will be included in Graph Search, displaying the most recent posts that include hashtags. It is assumed that Facebook hopes this move will encourage categorized conversation and discussion by brands and individuals alike.