YouTube, a platform that is most known for video streaming, has also introduced some very social media features like the ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ buttons, the comment section, and the newly introduced YouTube Shorts. However, no social media platform is complete without #hashtags, and today, YouTube is bridging that gap as well. The platform is now introducing hashtag landing pages, which means that users will now be able to discover content using just hashtags.
The way it will work is that users will be able to click a tag or type in a hashtag link directly to access a hashtag linking page. Then, YouTube will automatically land you on a page that contains videos that have used this hashtag. What this means is that you will not be able to land on a hashtag place by searching it on the search bar. Instead, you would have to click a specific tag or enter the URL for said hashtag.
This is in contrast to how it responded to hashtags before, where it would just show videos that were somewhat related to what the hashtag was.
Moreover, the company will also make sure that it shows you the “best” videos at the top. The best, of course, will be decided by an algorithm, and YouTube is already quite proficient in that area. However, it will still probably take some time before the results on a hashtag page are completely filtered, since as of yet, searches provide weird results.
The feature has already been rolled out to all users, and is available on both desktop and mobile.
Last year, YouTube rolled out another very social media like feature with YouTube Shorts. The feature introduced TikTok like short videos on the platform, something that has recently become a part of every social media app. Thus, YouTube has been inching closer and closer to a traditional social media platform and seeing how it is the only thing from Google that has the chance of breaking into the market, it seems like a smart move.
