Facebook has introduced Twitter-style clickable hashtags to its social network.

Hashtags can be placed in any Facebook post and then clicked by the users friends. Alternatively, users can search by a particular hashtag to see all public posts relating to the topic. Hashtags also carry across from other services including Instagram.

The move has looked inevitable for a while, with most other social networks, including Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram – which Facebook of course owns – all use the hashtag as a way of gathering together posts on a single topic, and rumours have been circling since March that Facebook was testing the functionality.

The Public Conversations functionality, as Facebook is officially calling it, is starting to be deployed now, and will roll out to all users over the next few weeks.

The initial offering is quite bare – hashtags are only clickable or searchable on desktop, though users will be able to post hashtags from mobile – but Facebook is promising to build on this in the weeks to come.

“Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations,” said Gregory Lindley, product manager at Facebook. “Well continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months, including trending hashtags and deeper insights, that help people discover more of the worlds conversations.”

In its announcement, Facebook also revealed that 88-100m Americans are engaged on the social network during television primetime – “roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night”. The recent Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones received over 1.5m mentions on Facebook – compared to the episodes total 5.2m viewership – and this years Oscars attracted over 66.5m Facebook interactions including likes, comments, and posts.