Facebook Introduces @Mentions

Image by lawgeek via Flickr

Facebook announced a few days ago that it would be introducing Twitter-like @mentions, today they enabled this feature. When you update status or type a message onto a friends profile, enter the '@' prefix and begin typing a friends name, group, brand (that you're following) and a drop-down menu appears.

Admittedly you could write the names anyway but this update provides a trackback to the friends profile, group, brand etc. I can see this proving a popular feature on Facebook but I also expect that services that aggregate status updates like Friendfeed could see a negative response. Facebook again imitating popular features from rival services, did I hear Twitter mentioned at the back of the classroom?! Are we content with the amount of control we allow Facebook over our online identity?

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Soon, Facebook will also allow users to tag friends in applications as well. Sound familiar? It's clear that Facebook has its sights on becoming a massive company on the order of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. At the rate the userbase is growing, how long will it be until they achieve that vision?

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