Skip to main content

Facebook is testing out LinkedIn-style profile tags

Facebook is testing out LinkedIn-style profile tags

/

Go on, pigeonhole yourself

Share this story

Facebook seems to be taking a cue from LinkedIn and is early in the process of testing a new feature — profile tags.

Verge reader Luke M. alerted us to Facebook's new profile tags feature, and the company confirmed it was testing them out with the following statement: "Profile tags are a creative tool that lets you and your friends add tags to your profile to highlight the things that describe you and what you're into." Created as part of an internal Facebook hackathon, the new feature will let you add tags to your own profile, or let your friends add tags for you, which you must approve before they become publicly visible. Tags are free-form, which means you can type in pretty much whatever you want, even including emojis.

Designer? Thinker? Tags let you describe what you're into

Once the feature is rolled out to everyone, friends can add tags by going to your profile and tagging you using words or phrases that describe you, or what you do ("happy camper", "thinker", "graphic artist," etc.) You'll receive a notification, prompting you to accept or decline your tags. If you accept, the tags become visible to everyone; if you decline, the tags disappear. Or you could just ignore the notification (cough, just like you do with certain friend requests), and the tags will remain pending, visible only to you and the friend who tagged you. Once approved, other friends can "like" your tags, which will appear in descending order by the number of likes.

fb tags

With this new feature, Facebook is both pulling features from other sites but also adding yet another layer to an already complex experience — the social network seems to want to be your one stop-shop for connecting with friends, catching up on news, watching videos, and, with this latest update, maybe even connecting with strangers who have similar interests. How tags will actually be used though, is as yet unclear. According to Facebook, this feature is currently only being tested in New Zealand, with no word on when other countries might get to try it.