TAG … you’re it!!!

This week has been a huge in the world of social networking: Oprah tweeted about her new figure, a facebook quiz was created titled “Where will Kanye West interrupt you?” and MySpace became even more forgotten (if that’s possible).

But in the midst of all this, nerds at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California let their suspenders down as they celebrated a new type of status: the tagging. Simply by putting an @ sign, followed by the person’s name (e.g. @Kevin Rudd) on your facebook status, means they are tagged and your status features on their wall.

Facebook’s product manager, Andrew Huang said the status tags are “all about engagement”.  The implications of this tagging on a user’s privacy will of course go unnoticed. Just as photos of you taken by any user can be seen, tagging in your status will give other facebook users automatic links to yours and your friend’s pages.

It would appear that in this digital culture where the world is becoming more and more connected, the rules for referencing and acknowledging others are still just as important. By tagging people in your status like “drinking soup shots with @Magda Szubanski” or “listening to the sweet sound of @Barack Obama call @Kanye West a jackass” has an effect of linking more and more people together in the name of global connectedness.

This new status tagging feature seems to be a way of acknowledgement, at least how it is initially being used. Like a lot of things on the internet, this was not an original idea. Twitter has encouraged their tweeters to tag their followers in statuses long before facebook had any face to it. How ironic that this new type of referencing fails to reference its inspiration: twitter. Good one facebook. In my anger I tweeted at facebook that they need to be a bit more original in their operations. In response to that, they also announced this week you can now log in to facebook using your username (another twitter feature). In a time of financial hardships and crises, it is great to see such collaboration between social networking sites. Pity they’re rivals, not allies. This is WAR in the world of social networking.

For more information on status tagging, see Facebook’s official blog. 

Alex Wharton is an avid tweeter and facebooker.

Image: (c) Oliver Widder, Available http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/cnews/article.php/3819381/Tech-Comics-Etiquette-on-Facebook-Twitter.htm