Facebook has launched an interesting feature today: the ability to tag friends in status updates and other messages from the publisher. As with Twitter, you use the “@” symbol followed by your friend’s name (or the name of a Facebook Page or Group) to tag something, but the message shows up without the symbol and just a link to the person’s profile.
The ability to “Tag” friends was one that Facebook popularized with its tagging feature in photos years ago. As Facebook notes in its blog post announcing the new “@” feature, tagging is one of the most popular features on the social network. I’d venture to say it’s probably one of the early features that made Facebook’s social technology so distinct.
But Twitter, or at least its users, pioneered the “@” functionality to tag friends, which has long been missing from Facebook’s status updates. That said, there are some key differences both from a UI perspective and in the way tagging on Facebook works. Unlike Twitter, where you have to memorize your friends’ usernames (or use a third party client that features auto-complete), on Facebook when you begin typing in a friend’s name following the “@” symbol, you’ll see a drop-down menu that will let you choose from your list of friends, groups, events and applications.
And while @replies on Twitter are often used for conversations, on Facebook the use-case is a bit different. When you tag someone in a status update, that person will receive a notification and a Wall post, which links the person to your status update. Similar to tagging in photos, the person has the option of removing the tag. Inside Facebook reports that the feature will be rolling slowly over the next few weeks.
Facebook has been steadily growing its social network (at a faster rate that Twitter) and made a recent acquisition that is representative of Facebook’s aggressive tactics in the steady battle with Twitter. While the “@” feature addition to Status Updates maybe small in comparison to the acquisition of FriendFeed, it’s significant when it comes to the bigger picture of the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Twitter.
nice
going to go check it out now
This is one of those features that feels *real good* but is actually a profoundly bad idea. The problem with these “@tags” is that they have no namespace and mean different things depending on context. (@foo on Facebook need not mean the same as @foo on some other service.) It reminds me of the email addresses that we used to use before we interconnected networks and mail systems (70’s and 80’s). In the old days, you could send mail to “bob” and know who would get it. Then, as we moved away from closed, proprietary systems into open, interconnected systems, we had to add domain names and namespaces to differentiate between the many bobs. (i.e. “bob” became “bob@example.com”… or “bob@dec.com”, etc.)
These namespace-free hash-tags are simply one more way that closed systems tie their users to their proprietary solutions. Such naming schemes increase the switching costs between systems at the same time as they reinforce the network effects enjoyed by today’s winners. They are anti-competitive conventions. Namespace-free names are bad. They are evil. They must, eventually, be done away with.
bob wyman
true.
An interesting launch from Facebook! While tagging someone in a status update, the tagged person receives a notification and a Wall post, which links the person to the status update straight. This is an amazing feature. But comes a bit late.
drop-down doesn’t work in Opera browser
Yes, while there could be thousands of @matt’s, the purpose is to bring a dropdown of *people in your network* so you can select the exact user_id. FB then makes direct links to their profile instead of having the @ character, nullifying the namespace / context problem you’re talking about.
Not to mention that people on Facebook use their real, full names in most cases. Unlike twitter where we use handles.
Facebook had always missed functionality to post to multiple friends’ walls.. This should fix it.
Facebook Vs. Twitter??
I suppose just for the battle’s sake Facebook improvises its social network constantly. It mainly brings innovations resembling Twitter. But I think uniqueness and originality is always different.
Try something different.
I literally just started using @ tags on Facebook wen chatting on statuses yesterday.. but didn’t know about this lil gem arriving… sweet…
For some reason using the @ is so much easier on twitter than FB….
did it work for you?
they said it will take a few weeks
It don’t seems to work for me just yet. Wait a minute, was it launched for the US only again?
Given that Twitter’s homepage still doesn’t have auto-complete, I’d beg to differ.
who does actually use twitter’s homepage for tweeting?
Not working for me. How sad. They should roll that one out fast.
This is off topic, but speaking of innovations, I really think you guys a TechCrunch should have a funny caption contest. I really think it would go over well. Anyway, keep up the great work.
Is this really that big of a deal??
Kathy- I would like a Pike’s Place with a dash of half + half. Thanks!
They are so right. Because the @ is a way of being telepathic. And this is cool.
This @ behaviour is one reason for the tremendous success of twitter.
I’ll be very interested to see how Facebook handles tweets imported from other systems: will it try to map them, or leave them alone?
It would be great if it could somehow store the reference of twitter handles to facebook users.
Already does. You can link to and pipe to FB from Twitter, Yoono, Dotspots, and others. No mapping -it just updates as your status – even if you post a link as you could with DotSpots. In some circumstances, it does indicate your client source (a la twitter).
If your asking about external mapping, fat chance. Why give a way out of the walled garden unless they trackback as they do with articles and other external links?
She means if you Type (On Twitter) “Had fun with @TwitterUsername tonight” and you have it set up so that facebook imports it, what does facebook do with the @ reply
oh by the way i am glad you removed the toolbar
+1
Techcrunch turns to Yalleywag for inspiration again and again and again.
wow
If you can’t beat ‘em, copy ‘em!
totally right
A a Twitter Ripoff, but I dont care at all. Good move facebook.
This comment does not containe the Mashabl*** word. hope it goes through
Robert Scoble said: “FriendFeed is Facebook’s R&D Dept” Facebook has always been using Twitter for R&D as well.
that’s cool, we now have this in the Blogtronix platform as well, but we use it across the blogs, comments, wikis, docs, etc and people than see the tag in their activity feed.
LOVE this move by Facebook. Now they just need to do a couple more things to really stick it to ‘em:
1) add Twitter profile fields
2) automagically convert @mentions from tweeted statuses into clickable Facebook profile links
LOL. That would be so twitter by then
Innovation through immitation..
Could this be a result of my blogpost last week on why tweets are more social than facebook updates? http://bit.ly/hx3f8
I think facebook is far better then twitter because of its vast features. Nice info, Thanks
hmm .. Twitter is limited to 140 characters .. and facebook is fast …. in evrything . not just abr status which it lets you update .. you can type there more than 140 characters.. I feel its a small change but a good one .. you can directly make a update for someone ..
Best,
Daina
do you guys really think facebook is really “battling” twitter? i mean, the sizes and the growth figures just don’t fit
There is no FB – Twitter rivalry. I’m quite sure Twitter doesn’t care what FB does. Zuckerburg is the one fighting Twitter as some sort of perceived threat.
Zuckerburg can’t understand that we go to FB to tell our FB friends what we’re up to, and we go to Twitter to tell the world what we’re up to, which is why most of us who use both import from Twitter to FB, not the other way around.
This @ reply thing Zuckerburg has installed will only screw things up for FB users as our tweets continue to be imported.
Exactly. I’ve always thought of Facebook and Twitter as complementary services, not competitors, which is why the last FB page redesign (that made it more Twitter-like) frustrated me so much