Facebook testing out tags for your profile

Facebook Profile
Your Facebook Profile could be about to evolve.

Facebook is testing out a new feature called Profile Tags, the social network has confirmed to The Verge. Tags help you define who you are and the idea seems to have been borrowed from LinkedIn.

"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," explained Facebook in a statement.

Born out of a Facebook hackathon, there's no guarantee that this new feature will make it out to everyone - Facebook quite often tests out different ideas with small groups of users before abandoning them again.

Tag, you're it

These tags are freeform and can be just about anything you want: put in your job title, your life philosophy or your areas of expertise. It sounds a bit like those lists of qualities people tend to put in their Twitter bios.

The tags are public too, so it may be a way of making you easier to find on the web at large. If you're stuck for something to say then your friends can add tags for you - though they don't appear until you've approved them.

Even with more than a billion users to its name, Facebook knows it can't afford to stand still and rest on its laurels - most of us still remember what happened to MySpace.

David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.