Today Facebook has announced the ability to tag users within status updates and posts. In order to tag your friends in feed updates you simply use the “@” sign and begin typing a user’s name. As you type, their name will be displayed below the publisher. Those messages will then be posted to a user’s wall as though you posted it. While Facebook has not stated that usernames can be substituted in this area, my assumption is that they soon will.
For too long Facebook users have not been able to associate updates with their friends but over the coming weeks they will be able to as Facebook rolls out this new feature. Users will also be able to remove tags of themselves from updates, something that Twitter does not enable. This new feature is of major significance as it closes the loop of communication, enabling users to associate just about any form of content with their friends.
While not yet available, users will soon be able to tag groups, events, applications, and Pages. This form of association information is significant and will further enable users to communicate clearly with each other. Many have wondered how long Facebook would wait to implement this feature but as of today it is now being rolled out. The implementation of this new feature also emphasizes Facebook’s emphasis on structured data.
Information attributed to an individual user helps us paint a picture of that individual’s personality as well as their general habits. In addition to giving Facebook ad developers greater access to understanding a user, it also is extremely useful for producing more effective communication. Didn’t see that your friend wrote about you in a recent status update? You won’t have to worry anymore now that they’ll tag you in it.
We have not been included in the first version of users to test out the new forum of tagging so let us know if you’ve used it already. Also, do you think this will have a significant impact on Twitter?
good stuff, still waiting for that video calling feature.
Thanks Nick, its great to be kept up to date with Facebook advances and have it explained clearly
ready for waiting to apply
not working for me. What the heck?!?!
Great idea - can’t wait til it’s available!
I don’t like it because I don’t go on Facebook as often as my friends and they’re very inappropriate and could be embarrassing. So even if it did tag me, I won’t sign on on time to disable it. As long as there’s a permanent disable option, I’m fine. It’s already enough I had to disable comments on my wall because of them.
Definitely a gamechanger Nick. This will have strong, positive implications for Pages and organic virality therein.
I don’t get how this works? I write a message in my status either on my profile or news page, type the @ symbol and start typing a friend’s name, I get nothing. If anyone has figured out how to make this happen please send me a message to my in box and tell me how! I would greatly appreciate it.
You type the @ symbol and if you have this feature enabled, a list of your connections will drop down and you can then choose who to tag.
And the @ symbol will not appear in the status, looks like just a link to the profile. Which I like, and this is a huge game changer imo.
Well, how do you enable it? It isn’t working for me, either.
its not available to everyone just yet. but its starting to be rolled out to users. so soon.
but i have to admit with Dave it is a huge gamechanger.
I neeeeeed this
This would be a nice feature once it works for everyone. I could not get it to work for me just yet. I wonder how this will play with Twitter updates that also update Facebook with user’s @ names?
I wish we could have a status update and exclude some friend from seeing it… How often do we want to put (”Where we are going today”) But we have co workers or boss’s as friends… Or we might be planning a surprise party and dont want someone to see…
Hi Nick,
Just tested this out - it’s up and running. My question is: how do you shut off wall posts if someone tags you? I don’t see the update in the privacy settings.
Update: you need to untag yourself from the poster’s tag…no preset privacy setting at this time to opt out of tags appearing.
I tested the tag function in status-updates a couple of days ago. At that time when I tagged the fanpage, the comment appeared on the page. Why does it not do that anymore???????
How do I track it when fans tag my fanpage in statusupdate will it appear in my comments on the page?
does anyone know?
Peace, Simon