This morning I emailed my sister a story about Google interns making $20,000 per summer with a photo of them playing in a ball pit. She responded: “#MoneyInABallPit.”

I’d be hard pressed to think of a seriously useful benefit to the hashtag. Hashtags are a cultural phenomenon that have bypassed their Twitter origins. They’re useful for conveying irony on the internet. They’re useful for conveying extreme irony in real life conversations. The hashtag was even deemed “Word of the Year” — it’s gone global. But on Wednesday, Facebook welcomed Twitter’s iconic feature with open arms, apparently not ironically:

“Hashtags are a first step in surfacing relevant and important public conversations. Over time our goal is to build out additional functionality for marketers including trending hashtags and new insights so that you can better understand how hashtags fit into your overall Facebook advertising strategies and drive your business objectives.”

Maybe back…