by Mary Killelea, September 14, 2009

You can now tag friends & Pages in status updates on Facebook Ex: tag your friend in your post. To tag Mary, start the post with @Mary (a drop down menu will appear so you can select which Mary - This is nice because if you use twitter you have to hope you remembered thier name correctly this feature helps you by providing choices.)

 Here’s how it works: when writing a status update in the publisher, users can tag connections by using the “@” symbol, just like on Twitter. Facebook pops up a dropdown menu that allows users to select any friend, Page, group, or event. When a friend, Page, etc, is tagged, that shows up on their wall. When you’re tagged, a notification is sent to you as well, and you can remove tags of yourself in others’ posts.

 What is great is that Facebook is enabling status tagging for all of a user’s Facebook connections – not just friends, but Pages, groups, and events as well. This means Page managers will now have a great new resource for tracking comments and feedback about their brand or business. 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.

As of today, all @ tags will appear on the wall of the Page as well, even though users never visited the Page. The same applies to event and group administrators as well. That’s a big deal for Page administrators hoping to gain more insight into how they’re being talked about inside Facebook.