In a direct acknowledgement of the popularity of Twitter, Facebook has mimicked Twitter's @mention feature, which enables users to respond directly to friends, companies and events.
The upshot for advertisers is that they will be able to track every mention of their brand names, potentially making the 250 million worldwide Facebook audience the most important customer service and market research channel available.
Several brands from Vodafone to British Airways use Twitter's tagging to monitor what people say about their products. Dell claims to have made several million pounds worth of sales through Twitter alone, indicating that Facebook, with a larger audience, could also become a major retail channel.
Twitter has not yet responded to the new feature from Facebook.
In a seperate move, Facebook's simplified version, Facebook Lite, launched in the US and India today. The service, strips out all of the rich media content and apps, making the Facebook experience simpler and very much akin to Twitter. Facebook LIte is expected to be available in the UK imminently.
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