Update: The feature is now appears to be live for many users.
Original Article: Facebook announced a new feature today, which allows users to tag their friends in their status updates and other posts from the publisher. Previously, you could only tag friends in photos, videos, and notes.
“It’s another way to let people know who and what you’re talking about,” says Facebook’s Tom Occhino. “People often update their status to reflect their thoughts and feelings, or to mention things they feel like sharing. Sometimes that includes referencing friends, groups or even events they are attending — for instance, posting ‘Grabbing lunch with Meredith Chin’ or ‘I’m heading to Starbucks Coffee Company — anyone want some coffee?'”
Now guess how you tag somebody from the publisher…include the “@” symbol. Yes, that’s right. One more thing that Facebook seems to have adopted from the Twitter culture. To be fair, the @ doesn’t display once you tag a friend. When you type the @ and start typing a friend’s name, it will provide a drop-down menu of suggestions that you can choose from, and when you pick somebody, it will insert their name as a clickable link to their profile. It works with friends, groups, events, apps, and Pages.
Facebook says that soon you will also be able to tag people from applications as well.
Friends who are tagged will receive notifications and wall posts, linking them to the tagger’s post. They will have the option to remove tags of themselves.
The feature will be rolled out over the next several weeks, so if it doesn’t work for you yet, don’t freak out. It will soon enough.
