It's been a big week for Facebook. After revamping some of the site's core features, the company hosted its developer conference in San Francisco yesterday and dropped some more bombshells. The whole experience on the site is about to change.
Facebook's new features mark a change in strategy. Last year Facebook set out to expand its reach by making some of its most popular features—mainly the Like button and commenting—ubiquitous on the Web. By spreading its Likes and comments to thousands of sites, Facebook further intertwined itself with the rest of our online existence, and its membership ballooned to a monolithic 800 million users.
Now that Facebook's got us, it wants to keep us. Earlier this year CEO Mark Zuckerberg said increased user engagement was the goal, and that the number of users was no longer the key metric they were looking at. From the company's announcements yesterday, it's clear he wasn't just talking big in the wake of Google introducing its Facebook clone, Google+.
If there's a common theme in Facebook's new changes, it's keeping relevant experiences relevant. News feeds and profile pages are littered with the most recent information about you and your friends, no matter how inconsequential. Now a host of new features will work to highlight the most important experiences on the network.
At the same time, those more transitory updates ("Eating killer hot wings right now!!!") may no longer front and center, but they've been enhanced, expanding the activities they cover and becoming more real-time.
Facebook's new features mark a change in strategy. Last year Facebook set out to expand its reach by making some of its most popular features—mainly the Like button and commenting—ubiquitous on the Web. By spreading its Likes and comments to thousands of sites, Facebook further intertwined itself with the rest of our online existence, and its membership ballooned to a monolithic 800 million users.
Now that Facebook's got us, it wants to keep us. Earlier this year CEO Mark Zuckerberg said increased user engagement was the goal, and that the number of users was no longer the key metric they were looking at. From the company's announcements yesterday, it's clear he wasn't just talking big in the wake of Google introducing its Facebook clone, Google+.
If there's a common theme in Facebook's new changes, it's keeping relevant experiences relevant. News feeds and profile pages are littered with the most recent information about you and your friends, no matter how inconsequential. Now a host of new features will work to highlight the most important experiences on the network.
At the same time, those more transitory updates ("Eating killer hot wings right now!!!") may no longer front and center, but they've been enhanced, expanding the activities they cover and becoming more real-time.
Timeline
The biggest problem Facebook has faced in the past year is that activity on the network is so fleeting. Not only has it got 800 million of us, we're now sharing more than ever.
That means big updates quickly fall off our profiles or news feeds, swallowed by time, and only visible if you continually click "More Posts" at the bottom of pages.
Enter Facebook Timeline. Timeline is a new way to present your profile page so the most relevant memories and experiences are highlighted. Everything is shown in more of a scrapbook format instead of the old "river" of updates. Of course, users can edit which things to highlight. Available right now to developers, Timeline is coming Sept. 30 to everyone. For a detailed tour of the new feature, check out 10 Things You Should Know About Facebook Timeline.
Enter Facebook Timeline. Timeline is a new way to present your profile page so the most relevant memories and experiences are highlighted. Everything is shown in more of a scrapbook format instead of the old "river" of updates. Of course, users can edit which things to highlight. Available right now to developers, Timeline is coming Sept. 30 to everyone. For a detailed tour of the new feature, check out 10 Things You Should Know About Facebook Timeline.
Revamped News Feed
Before unveiling Timeline, Facebook rolled out yet another retooling of the news feed, this time putting more effort into finding posts from your friends that you'd find interesting, putting them up top and marking them with a blue triangle.
Before unveiling Timeline, Facebook rolled out yet another retooling of the news feed, this time putting more effort into finding posts from your friends that you'd find interesting, putting them up top and marking them with a blue triangle.
Facebook says it's now "more like your own personal newspaper." Users have been less then enthused.
Ticker
Going hand in hand with the all-new news feed, the Ticker is the place where all those barely relevant "Likes" and activity updates now go ("Jill and Marcus are now friends").
Going hand in hand with the all-new news feed, the Ticker is the place where all those barely relevant "Likes" and activity updates now go ("Jill and Marcus are now friends").
While these updates have been literally and figuratively pushed aside, they've now got the benefit of pouring into the Ticker in real-time, hence the name. They're also arguably about to get a lot more interesting thanks to another new feature...
Not Just 'Like' Anymore
Facebook's Like button is everywhere now, but it's limiting. Often, people won't Like something for fear of it coming across as an endorsement.
Facebook's Like button is everywhere now, but it's limiting. Often, people won't Like something for fear of it coming across as an endorsement.
New verbs will change all that. Now people will be able to "Listen," "Watch," or "Want" something—any action, really (assuming Facebook approves). Those updates can be hooked up to specific apps like Netflix or Spotify and automatically show up in the Ticker.
Graph Rank
The thing about those Ticker updates is they're not just updates. Thanks to a developer tool called Graph Rank, once you see that your friend Al is listening to Rihanna on Spotify, now you can click on the update and listen, too. Lucy watching Glee on Hulu? Join in and start commenting together.
The thing about those Ticker updates is they're not just updates. Thanks to a developer tool called Graph Rank, once you see that your friend Al is listening to Rihanna on Spotify, now you can click on the update and listen, too. Lucy watching Glee on Hulu? Join in and start commenting together.
The plan, of course, is to make all kinds of online activity social, not just sharing stories, photos, and videos.
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