@Mentions Are Now Live on Facebook
Facebook announced that it would soon support Twitter-like @mentions a few days ago. Today, Facebook actually enabled this functionality. Now, when you type a status update and type '@,' an auto-updating drop-down menu with the names of your Facebook friends will appear. While users could always write the name of their friends in a status update, these names are now linked to a user's profile. Soon, Facebook will also allow users to tag friends in applications as well.
Whenever somebody tags you in a status update, a notification will appear. For now, however, there is no place where you can easily find all the updates where somebody tagged you. It is also worth noting that while Twitter actually displays the @ symbol in status updates, Facebook just replaces it with the full name of the tagged person.
Obviously, this now makes Facebook even more like Twitter than ever before. At the same time, though, this is also a very useful feature, as it allows your friends to easily head over to the profile of the friends you tagged in your updates. Facebook's Twitter-like new Facebook Lite interface, however, doesn't support @mentions, yet.
Tip of the hat to Zee at The Next Web for being the first to notice that this feature was live.
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Is there a way that you can mention someone in your status update without their name showing up in the status?
Page Administrators should have access to fans for @replies. Do you know if this in in the works?
That's a really good idea too.
Thanks for the link/mention Frederic, very much appreciated.
Inasmuch as many Facebook users are known by multi-word names (at least in my sphere), and inasmuch as most "friends" do not refer to their "friends" by multi-word names in the normal course of conversation (at least in my habit), it seems not likely that e.g. @Herbert @Hoover will become a meaningful frequent usage, ¿qué no?
Another quick mentions guide for facebook
http://digg.com/d314JK7
This is pretty appealing and continues in the direction of having everyone connected. We tend to like to click on links.
Was hoping for more innovation rather than a me too approach to what Twitter started and now Facebook adopted.
http://www.trendslate.com
This is great- would be better if the tagged person showed up either at the end of the status or not at all. Tagging them but having it be "under the covers". Great work FB!