Facebook Introduces @ Tagging

Facebook is taking another one from Twitter's playbook, introducing the ability to tag friends in status messages and other kinds of public messages using the “@” symbol in a manner very similar to the one on the microblogging site. The new feature will be gradually introduced in the coming weeks and will allow users to tag Pages and groups as well.

“Today, we are adding a new way to tag people and other things you're connected to on Facebook — in status updates and other posts from the Publisher. It's another way to let people know who and what you're talking about,” Facebook engineer Tom Occhino introduced the new feature. “People often update their status to reflect their thoughts and feelings, or to mention things they feel like sharing. [...] Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend's name to something you are posting, just include the '@' symbol beforehand.”

The feature is very similar to Twitter's reply system, but it does add some new functionality and also has a more thorough implementation. Typing the “@” symbol in a status update and then beginning to write the name of what you are trying to tag will bring up a drop-down menu with possible friends, events, Pages, groups or applications that match the name. The message itself will feature the actual name of your friend or the Page referred to and not the “@” symbol.

As with photo and video tags, the ones that get tagged in the messages will be notified and the post will be added to their Wall. Of course, if they choose to, they can remove the tags from the posts. Still, this could potentially become a constant annoyance, especially for the most popular users, who may be flooded with tags. The @replies have been popularized by Twitter, but employing “@” to refer to a particular user has been a widely used convention on forums, mailing lists and even in blog comments.