Is facebook tagging a playground game or an adult social media tool…?

If you don’t know what tagging is… it is involving friends, contacts or pages you like in things you are saying by using the @ sign.  This of course means everyone who knows them will also see what you are saying.

On twitter it is their twitter name on facebook their name or the page name which will appear in the drop down box underneath as you type.

Now sadly this is very badly abused… in fact one person I showed this to saw how powerful it was and immediately set about tagging every high profile person or page he knew on facebook.  Now whether this was youthful exuberance or deliberate leveraging off their lists (you know the nosey thing we have of who the heck is this let’s go look.. making their message get further.. and hopefuly adding more friends to their lists) I don’t know, but it is not nice.

You can use the same technique on facebook and on twitter but it is leveraging of their lists so please use

Image via Wikipedia

wisely… and twitter is particularly obvious and often used by spammers…

Don’t use it just to leverage off their lists unless you are promoting something they are doing or are involved with

Don’t tag high profile people or celebrities just because you can… they probably do not look after their own accounts and you will hit the spam filter quicker than swatting a fly, even worse if they do…. Congratulations! you have just made the LASTA list that’s Lunatics And Stalkers To Avoid – well done!

It is still a very powerful tool to use and if you are connecting the right people and the right places together… you can send your page impressions on facebook pages sky rocketing… (we have just hit 89,000 for the last month)

Tag people without good reason or needlessly on twitter and you will see yourself unfollowed pretty sharpish and probably reported for spamming.  The same can and does happen on facebook and has resulted in people losing their accounts… so play nicely and follow some simple guidelines.

1.  Do you know them?
2. Will they be pleased?
3. Does it look spammy?
4. Will it benefit you both?
5. Will anyone get annoyed?

If it feels wrong… don’t do it… fairly simple really… so no name dropping… it’s not liked in the pub so why would it be liked on-line….

On facebook you could until today only tag in the initial post.  Now you can do it in subsequent comments, asssuming of course you like the page or know the person involved.  Actually this is really cool and means you can introduce people and pages to the conversation which will make them more interactive, so it is a very clever move on facebook’s part and long overdue.

You can also tag people in pictures and video… having been the victim of a personal piccie broadcast to the world because of a tag my profile settings have been changed so only family and friends can see these… and you can remove them all together.  This is in your personal account settings.  It may be wise for younger people to do this to prevent interesting pictures appearing on their wall where the world can see them…. who knows who is looking at them… and could cost them a job… as this Daily Mail article warns…

So use this fabulous tool to explode your impressions and contacts… wisely!

Image via Wikipedia