You Can Tag Status Updates on Facebook. So Now What?

Facebook forged ahead today in its continued adoption of the features social networking users have come to know and love within the walls of its rival Twitter. Although “within the walls” is likely not a good choice of words, as it’s the openness and ability to conversate outside the confines of one-to-one communication that once set Twitter apart, and has created somewhat of an identity crisis for Facebook these days.

As reported many times over (see Mashable, Read Write Web, Inside Facebook), this afternoon Facebook has released the ability to tag friends, Pages, groups, and events in status updates. This feature is a direct descendant of the @replies that are very familiar for Twitter users, It follows Facebook’s unveiling of the Twitter-like streaming wall for status updates, real-time search, and Facebook Lite - all features that have grown out of a clear desire to keep up with the Jones’.

So what effects will tagging in status updates have on the social media landscape?

• Facebook users who haven’t made it over to Twitter yet will see what all the fun is about. For better or worse, very public discourse has a great appeal for a lot of us.  Now 250 million Facebook users will get to take part in it in a way they never could before.
• This will get annoying. At least at first. Look for more status updates…so many more status updates. A lot of which will be even less relevant for most of the friends that are privy to them. Expect to even see some backlash updates calling for an end to the madness and the narcissism.
• Companies will have greater access to actionable data. Combined with the recent addition of real-time search, there is now a much greater body of information to cull insights from via Facebook.  The biggest social network is heading towards becoming the biggest source of market research on the web. (As soon as more users begin switching over to making the updates publicly available).
• Facebook users who haven’t made it over to Twitter probably won’t anytime soon. The more and more Facebook becomes like its little brother, the less likely it is that Facebook die-hards will see reason to join Twitter. Tagging of status updates is simply one less reason.
• Twitter users will send less time on Facebook. The appeal for many Twitter users is the inherent difference between it and its big brother. They satisfy two different purposes.  As an unnamed source joked “the facebook profile is a well-crafted representation of a person, that people spend literally years crafting to perfection whereas twitter, in my opinion, if used properly, is all about drawing attention to how much better your life is than everyone else’s who follows you. two totally different concepts.” All joking aside there’s truth to it. And now some Twitter users will have reason to spend less time somewhere that falls short of the benefits of Twitter yet has lost its own long-time charm.

Also of interest from our perspective is how far this will go.  At some point will users and Pages be able to call out users/Pages/groups that they are not already connected to?  It would have a profound effect on all of us, business more than anyone. For now it remains to be seen, but certainly something we’ll be watching with a close eye.