Facebook adds @ mentions in status updates

Facebook is continuing its attack on Twitter with the introduction of a new @ feature that apes @ replies in Twitter.

Claiming that one of the "most popular features on Facebook is tagging," the social network is rolling out the ability to reference friends, groups or even events in their status messages.

How will you do that? Nothing like standardising something popular so from today Facebookers will be able to include the "@" symbol before the person they want to include.

According to Facebook "As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages" for you to select.

As with photo and video tags, friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post although they will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts.

Facebook say they are rolling this feature out over the course of the next few weeks.