• by Mark Walsh , September 10, 2009

Taking another page from Twitter, Facebook is giving users the ability to "tag" friends and Facebook Pages in status updates and posts using the "@" symbol as with mentions on the microblogging service.

Facebook has long allowed users to tag photos, videos and notes with friends' names. The latest step extends the popular feature for identifying and referencing people to other parts of the social networking site.

"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," wrote Facebook's Tom Occhino in a post on the company blog today. "As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages."

The post appears without the @ symbol, but just with a link to a person's profile or a Page or group. When you tag a friend or other recipient, they get a Wall post linking them to your update and receive a notification. They also have the option of removing tags of themselves from your posts. Likewise, you get a notification when someone tags you.

Facebook said it would soon add the ability to tag friends from applications as well. The overall aim of "status tagging" is to make Facebook more engaging and help users to connect with even more people, according to the company.

In that vein, the new feature could be especially beneficial for marketers with brand pages on Facebook. "Up until now, brands have been able to track posts and comments made on their Facebook Page directly by fans, as well as search public comments made by Facebook users through Facebook's new real-time search," wrote Inside Facebook's Justin Smith in a blog post. "Starting today, all @ tags will appear on the wall of the Page as well, even though users never visited the Page."

That gives companies an important new channel to track comments and feedback about their brands or businesses, he argues. It also highlights Facebook's intensifying battle with Twitter, which popularized use of the "@" symbol for tagging friends.

The move is also among the latest in a series of steps Facebook has taken to adapt aspects of Twitter including real-time search, more frequent updates and the launch of Facebook Lite -- a simpler, faster version of its service.

Facebook plans to roll out the new tagging feature gradually over the next few weeks.