'@' Tagging on Facebook resembling of Twitter

2:36 AM // 0 comments // ngsk // Category: Business , facebook , Micro Blogging , News , Technology , Twitter //

Social networking is the ongoing topic all over the web. This had most popularity when compared with other applications on web. There are so many social networking sites on web like Facebook, Twitter, Meme (recently launched by Yahoo), and Orkut (most popular in India), lot more.

Now a days there is more competition among the social network providers, as this is the online media to make friends and not only making friends but also share your thoughts with lot of people online. In such type of competition there is need of improvement of their site following the user’s mindsets that use their sites.

Also read:Meme

Facebook is one of the most popular sites of this category. Unlike Facebook, Twitter lets people share updates and links with anyone who cares to read them. So obviously there will be a competition between these two and it became more after the fail of trails made by Facebook to acquire Twitter.

A Research was carried out by Hitwise, a global information services firm and a subsidiary of Experian, monitored how more than 25 million internet users interact with over 1 million websites across more than 160 industry categories. It collected internet usage information through a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels.
In that research it was pointed out that ‘Facebook’ enjoyed the maximum 7.04 per cent of search volume followed by Myspace at 6.63 per cent and Youtube at 3.89 per cent.
The situation, however, is different in India. In terms of visit summary for August 2009, Orkut leads in India with 14.4 million unique visitors and has 2,713 million monthly page views, according to a study done by Vizisense — an online audience measurement and analytics platform. After Orkut, it is Youtube that has maximum Indians. With monthly visits of 68 million, Youtube has 10.5 million unique users from India.
At ninth position, Facebook has 7.91 million unique users from India, with an average page view of 10 per visit and an average monthly visit of 10 per person.
This information is taken from the article published on Business-Standards.com

So Facebook started slowly introducing features that mimic Twitter, in that process today Facebook introduced ‘@’ tag feature which is similar to that of Twitter’s ‘@’ tagging.

Facebook already allowed users to tag photos to identify other Facebook contacts. You can tag any image just by pointing to a spot on in the image and then identifying which contact that spot should be linked to. This type of image tagging has led to all kinds of fun (as well as possible malware compromise).
The new tagging feature in Facebook allows users to have a tag in posts rather than that on images.
For example if I wrote a post regarding my friends achievement on one of his project then at the end of the post I will add ‘@’ followed by my friends name (@ XXXXXXX) this will provide a link to my friends profile. You can use this feature not only at end but also in the middle of post which you share.
Using this feature is very simple when you are writing a post just type @ followed by your friend name or company name then a quick search will provide all the available users with the given name. Twitter also provides extra section where it displays the Status messages posted by others where your name was tagged.


In terms of social networking it helps to extend the network of contacts and allow people to easily find and link with even more like-minded individuals. This feature already exists on Twitter, which provides a quick link to the profile of your friend once @ is added just before your friend’s name.

Facebook seems to be making progress delivering features and functions that attract and retain users. But still it has to improve a lot to make it more users friendly.