William Shatner, the Canadian actor, musician and pop culture legend most famous for playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek, has written a lengthy, unfavourable review of Facebook's new Mentions app.

Shatner took to his Tumblr, Shatner Speaks, to post his thoughts on an app, which Facebook says "makes it easy for public figures to talk with their fans and each other on the go". Shatner isn't too keen.

In an in-depth analysis spread over five chapters, the actor compared the Mentions app with Facebook's other app, Pages, which anybody who has a Facebook page can download. Mentions, as Shatner notes, is available only to verified accounts.

He wasn't a fan of having to follow other celebrities in order to get started on Mentions, writing: "I think that is a big flaw in the set up. If this app is for celebrities then why force them to follow another celebrity in order to set up this app?". He was unimpressed when the app suggested he follow George Takei.

Notifications infuriated him: "Turn off notifications because if you post something your phone spends the next hour sending you notifications of every person who makes a comment."

The postings section of the Pages app is "sexier" than that of Mentions, he notes. However, he does praise Mentions for showing a "form of insights with groupings of numbers of statistics in a chronological manner." So that's something.

Shatner's overall opinion?

"I’m not quite sure why Facebook released this app for 'celebrities'. It seems to be ill conceived. I will probably use it to post to my Facebook when I’m on my phone but it doesn’t allow for mail or groups. I will continue to use my regular Facebook App as well as the Pages app."

At least Facebook can console itself by knowing that it isn't the only social network that has come in for Shatner criticism. The actor once took offence at Twitter's verification process, questioning how rigorous it was, and eventually requesting to be "unverified".

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