What does it mean when people put a "#" sign in front of a word on Facebook?

Beats me. Bad typing skills?

It means that that particular word is tagged… so when and if someone searches for that word,, the statement/update it is typed in on facebook will appear in the search results.
like if I said on my facebook : “OMG, I just saw the #queen passing by..” , then whenever someone searches for the word ’ queen ’ on facebook, my statement will appear in the search results. : )

Hashtagging to make it a searchable term. Didn’t know hashtags worked on FB. #creates a searchable term, @ties it to a person’s id, like here on Fluther.

@gailcalled: Nope. It’s intentionally done by lots of people.

@queenie: really!?! Weird, thanks!

I don’t think the hashtag works on Facebook though. Does it? I always assumed people used a program like Tweetdeck or something that lets you post to multiple social networks at the same time. So they put the hashtag in for Twitter, but it shows up on Facebook too since it’s all the same message.

It’s actually because most celebrities Facebook accounts are linked up to their Twitter accounts, therefore everything they post on Twitter is posted on Facebook. So they’re tagging someone/something on Twitter.
Facebook uses the ”@” symbol for tags, Twitter uses the ”#” symbol for tags.

It started as a search term for Twitter, now it’s just a fad to show off some sort of wittiness. I see it on Gawker and Jezebel a lot.

It’s actually used to make it a different term. If you tag something #weeds, that won’t show up in a search for weeds. But, if you’re trying to comment on the latest episode of the tv show Weeds, then you want to distinguish your post from someone talking about how their garden is infested with weeds. It’s also a way of saying ‘If I was filing this, this would be the label I’d put on it’. So for example, if I was bitching about my crazy mother, I might tag it #BadParents, or a post about my latest A grade on an exam #SuckOnItBitches (I always capitolize the first letter of a new word to make it easier to read, but most people don’t).

Charlie Sheen has declared that he is “winning”, when he signed up for a Twitter account, he got over 11K followers before his first tweet, and became the person to get 1 million followers the fastest, thus “winning” Twitter. I’m going to guess that #dealwithit means, deal with it, you people who are hating on Sheen, because he’s a freaking rock star from Mars.

@MyNewtBoobs: oddly enough, that makes a ton of sense. thank you