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I know I can tag my friends and groups in Facebook status updates using the @-notation. In addition I would like to tag groups I don't belong to or pages I'm not a "fan" of, like

Went to see @"Hot Tub Time Machine". You should too.

I am aware of the alternatives:

  • Joining the group to be able to tag it
  • Attaching a link to my status update
  • Pasting bit.ly-ed link to the page.

I'm trying to keep my facebook profile clean of ephemeral groups and my feed simple and readable, and I like the idiom of @tagging. Is this possible?

2 Answers 2

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As taken from Facebook's Help page, you cannot. I use the same alternatives as you do.

Tagging allows you to more actively mention your friends and other things you are connected to on Facebook.

An extra alternative you may want to add to your list is to use the Facebook Like Feature on websites. This way at least users can like your status. For example in this case , The Internet Movie Database.

fencliff likes Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) on IMDb.

Maybe movie theaters will grab in on this idea.

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  • Thanks, I anticipated this might not be possible. I like the Facebook Connect idea on via IMDb.
    – fencliff
    Commented Jul 13, 2010 at 12:33
  • (The first half of) this answer is not current anymore. Commented Mar 16, 2017 at 5:51
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By now, this will usually be no problem.

But sometimes the specific target you want to reference is not among the handful of suggestions in the dropdown menu that pops up next to your @:

To reference any target on Facebook even when it is not listed in the suggestions dropdown after typing the @:

To get a slightly different list of completion suggestions, you can add a non-alpha character like . - / \ _ (Space). You can delete it again and repeat with a different character, and so forth.

For users and groups which have a username defined and for pages, you can use the target’s name from the URL in the address bar to put behind the @:
Example: https://www.facebook.com/80000Hours/@80000Hours
For groups, keeping the prefix groups/ can help:
Example: https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/@group/effective.altrui
Note that I left out the s in groups/ and the ending …sts of effective.altruists. That’s because Facebook only matches up to 22 characters after the @. From the 23rd character on, the dropdown disappears. groups/ works as well as group/, but leaves one character less to specify the target’s name.

Users that you’re not connected to  can not be tagged by default, but they can enable it.
Example: @strohl89

Unfortunately, I don’t know yet what to do about users who don’t have a
username (username example: https://www.facebook.com/wdmacaskill)
(so they only have the numerical ID (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011278218122)).
I’d greatly appreciate a comment if someone knows!

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