Facebook vs. Twitter: The Line Continues to Blur

By Molly Galler

September 10th, 2009

This afternoon on Mashable, a guide to all things social media, writer Ben Parr quoted Facebook engineer Tom Occhino and announced that Facebook will now be adding an @mention capability to its existing status update feature.

Twitter, the originator of the @mention, or @reply, allows its users to mention another member, and that mention is hyperlinked to the user’s profile. This way, if you are following a particular person on Twitter, i.e. @mollygaller, and I mention another user, i.e. @bhaber602, you can click on @bhaber602’s mention in my tweet, and link directly to his Twitter profile. This is a great way to be introduced to other Twitter users whose tweets you may be interested in following.

Although you can already link your Twitter account to your Facebook account and allow your Twitter updates to also appear as your Facebook status, Facebook itself is now going to allow a similar, public conversation feature.

If you wish to mention a Facebook friend in a status update, you will type the @ symbol and then begin to type their name. A drop down list will appear and you can select the friend you wish to mention.

The @mention feature not only works for Facebook friends, but groups and fan pages as well.

Will non-Twitter users care about this new feature? Will the new @mention feature encourage individuals strictly using Facebook to dip their toe into the Twitter pond?

Entry Filed under: Digital Media Relations,Facebook,Social Media,Twitter