After nearly a year of quiet testing, Facebook is finally releasing its newest app specifically built for monitoring your interactions on Facebook and dubbed Mentions. The catch? Celeb-status users only, please.
Anyone who qualifies as a “verified public figure” (read: you have the venerated blue check mark) should be able to start using the app today. According to Re/code:
- The emphasis is on posting new messages, photos and videos, instead of reading what your pals have put up.
- There is a Mentions tab that’s supposed to make it easy for stars to see what people are saying about them. It looks strikingly like the “@” tab that Twitter has always had — and also uses the term “mentions.” It is another in a series of moves that are … inspired by Twitter’s playbook.
And while the app is being kept to the (tens of thousands of) users who qualify as “public influencers”, it would eventually be rolled out to “public figures” with regular ol’ Facebook profiles — a seemingly intentionally broad category.
While the app is supposedly being released today, we haven’t been able to access it in the iTunes store yet, but will update as soon as that changes. [Facebook via Re/Code]
Update: Looks like Mentions is now available for download in the App Store — of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to use it. But hey — you can always just stare at the icon and pretend.