Last week, Facebook made a move to threaten its competitor Twitter by adding @mention functionality to status updates. Much like the Twitter @replies, this feature allows users to reference and link to friends within their wall posts, status updates, shared links, etc. So how does this affect brands with Fan pages?
In addition to being able to mention friends, Facebook users can also mention fan pages, groups, and events. The user must be a fan of the page in order to mention it. This is an example, where a user mentions Harley-Davidson Motor Company:
Clicking on “Harley-Davidson Motor Company” will lead to the Harley-Davidson fan page. The status update also appears on the wall of H-D’s fan page as well:
This means that fans can now interact with a fan page without having to visit the fan page. A status mention is also more valuable than a wall post, because a status update appears on the newsfeeds of all of that user’s user’s friends as well. And although Fan pages cannot @mention other pages or fans at this point, it wouldn’t be surprising this became possible in the near future.
