Facebook introduced a status tagging function on the 14th of September competing more directly with Twitter.  Since Facebook acquired Friendfeed they have been competing with Twitter more aggressively in certain areas.  Recently Facebook added real-time search to its functionality providing Facebook users with the option of searching through results of photos, videos, notes, links, groups and pages from the past 30 days related to their search query.

Unlike the Twitter “@” function you don’t have to remember the name of the person you want to tag as Facebook auto-suggest names in a drop-down box.  The status tagging is not limited to only friends and can also be used to tag groups, pages or events.  At this stage the status tagging functionality only works in your status updates and not when commenting on a friend’s status.  According to Facebook they ‘might’ consider adding the tagging functionality to other areas of Facebook.

To tag someone, enter the “@” symbol and type the name of the friend, page, group or event you want to tag.  The “@” symbol will disappear and the tagged name will remain with a link to the actual page you are tagging.  When you are tagged you will receive a notification and a post will appear on your wall linking back to the original page where you were tagged along with an option to remove the tag like Facebook photos.