Facebook may have entered the hashtag game a little late, but it's not wasting any time playing catch up. The social network has just added hashtags to its mobile site and launched related hashtags.

#Gimmick?

When users click on, or search, for a hashtag Facebook will now display related hashtags that other users are posting or searching for in real time. For example, a search for #gillard may yield results for #rudd.

Twitter smack down

In the past month Facebook has both directly and indirectly launched new products that are going after Twitter's market share.

Early in June Facebook launched hashtags, while a few weeks later Facebook-owned Instagram debuted a video service that was strikingly similar to the Twitter-owned Vine. 

Real time

The usefulness of hashtags on Facebook has been questioned, as the news feed is populated by content Facebook thinks users want to see, rather than a real time feed like Twitter.

With the launch of real time searches on mobile, Facebook is taking one step closer to making hashtags more than a gimmick for its 1 billion plus users.

You can #bet Twitter will be watching this development very closely. 

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