eBay Patents Smart Hashtags for Social Shopping

Launching a new feature, eBay revealed it's filed a patent for what it calls smart hashtags for use on social networking sites such as Twitter. Of equal interest was eBay's revelation that it has a "Social Insights Strategist" on staff. Now when eBay shoppers click on a tweet or "Pin It" button on certain listings to share the products on social networking sites, eBay adds hashtags to the message. eBay called it a subtle way of dropping commerce into the social conversation in a nonobtrusive and user-friendly way.