Reported by Mashable, "@Mention Facebook’s most Twitter-like feature yet – the ability to include other users in messages using the “@” symbol – is now live". This is a new feature that tweeples are very familiar with, however definitely something new for facebook only users. There have been enough buzz in the sphere about this exciting new feature among the Facebook users. I can assure you though it is far more exciting for marketers around the world.

What is @Mention?

Originally from Twitter, @Mention is a special phrase that you can insert a link to the a user in the format of "@Username" anywhere in your update. This feature gets extended a little futher in Facebook. Not only that you can @mention people, you can even @mention events and pages that you joined or are invited. I'm not going to go through how to use this new featuer here, however If you are interested you can take a look at a complete walkthrough here.

What is the catch for Social Media Marketing?

If you have tested this function, you should be well aware that will have to be in someway related to what or who you are going to mentio. You have to be a member of the fan page / a guest of an event / or a friend of ther person you are going to mention. Also, you can't @Mention while commenting other's status updates. With these in mind, it is not hard to imagine that Facebook users will be more proactive to join events and fan pages, and connect to people just to make it easier to mention them. Certainly it is still too early to even estimate how far it would boost user to linking themselves to these entities, however marketers and promoters are definitely some of the few most beneficial parties among all the Facebook users as it will be much easier to get people to participate in events or get linked to. It will also be much easier to get exposures too from all mentions when Facebook users start to adopt the habbit creating more new updates than commenting under other's.