With Twitter gaining more popularity and in the fear of users losing interest in Facebook, the social networking site Facebook seems to be updating itself to look a lot more like Twitter.
On Facebook friends have to mutually agree to let each other check out their online profiles, whereas Twitter lets people share updates and links with anyone who cares to read them. This feature has turned Twitter into a tool for people to peer into the collective mind and see what people are talking about in real time.
Now Facebook seems to be very interested in those features. Since last fall, when Facebook tried and failed to acquire Twitter, it has been slowly trying to imitate Twitter by introducing similar features.
Last week, Facebook added two new, Twitter-like features. Users can now “tag” friends or companies that they mention in status updates, and they can use a the lighter version called Facebook Lite that resembles Twitter’s stream of status updates.
To tag another Facebook member in a status update, users type the @ symbol before the friend’s name. The @ symbol is a convention that Twitter users started.
Facebook has long allowed people to tag friends in pictures, but until now, not in status updates. When people are tagged, they get notified by e-mail, the update appears on their profile pages and their names are hyperlinked to their pages.
Mr. Huang, who developed the new tagging feature, said it would enable users “to talk about their real-world connections” and “interact with each other more.”
It will also enable people and businesses to monitor what others are saying about them on the site, which was previously much harder to do. That has been one of Twitter’s vital selling points to businesses.
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