Mark Zuckerberg’s divine creation Facebook is turning out to be the Holy Grail of computer software – the site has now gone the twitter way to take over the world.
Very soon Facebook users will be able to reply to their friends’ status messages without the need to type in their full name; like in twitter, Facebook will be equipped with the @Mention functionality that automatically displays your friend’s name. While tagging your friend’s name isn’t a very original idea, the way the @Mentions is used is quite unique – when you type in the first letter of your friend’s name Facebook will display a drop down menu from where you can simply select your buddy at the click of a button. (Pictured below)
Facebook engineer Tom Occhino explains the new feature:
‘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. 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. Soon, you’ll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you’ve added your tags.
Friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post. They also will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts. We hope that tagging your status updates and others posts from the Publisher will enable you to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, and connect with even more people. We’re rolling this feature out over the course of the next few weeks, so you may not see the new feature just yet.’
Also, Facebook Lite, a stripped down ultra light version of the social networking site has just come online, although it is available for US residents at the moment, (only our Director lucky Mr. Nithin Baalay can access it). Facebook, the third largest democracy in the world acquired social media real-time news aggregator Friendfeed just a couple of weeks ago and is fast approaching the number ‘billion’, with solid inputs from Microsoft ($240 million) and such.
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