Facebook revamps status updates to include 'what you're doing' tags

Facebook has announced a major status update overhaul, allowing users in the U.S. to tag a range of specific activities within their posts.

The social network wants users to share exactly what they're reading, listening to, watching, eating and drinking and is also allowing users to pick an emotion to accompany status updates.

From today, users can choose from one of the verb-centric categories and then begin typing the name of the product, book, movie etc. If that item has a Facebook page, the tag will link out to it.

The 'feeling' section of the new 'What are you doing?' section will serve up the long-rumoured emoticons, allowing users to state when they're feeling happy, sad, safe, etc.

One at a time

Items tagged within status updates, like movies, TV shows and books, will be added to the relevant section of the user's Facebook Timeline.

For example if users tag Jurassic Park then it'll appear within the watched movies section of the timeline.

In terms of how the new status updates will work, we received the update a short while ago and it appears that users are only able to apply one action per status update.

For example, users can say they're watching 'Jurassic Park,' eating pizza or feeling happy, but cannot apply them all to the same status.

US-only for now

Facebook said the update, which the company has been testing among a small sample of users since January, will take a few weeks to reach all users and will not affect existing privacy settings.

The company's blog post didn't announce a timeline for an international launch. TechRadar asked Facebook for comment and will update this story if a response is forthcoming.

UPDATE: When asked about an international launch, Facebook spokesperson told TechRadar: "Right now we're focused on rolling out to more people in the U.S."