The New Facebook: A Summary of *6 Key Changes
Some significant things happened to your Facebook profile, and the changes are not done yet!
It’s a huge week for Facebook! They are hosting their “F8” Conference, a typically once-a-year bash where they introduce mega new features, recap on where they are, and outline where they are going. Things have heated up recently for them as Google+, viewed as a competitor (just due to the sheer power of Google), rolled out a load of new features to, in my opinion, attempt to steal some thunder from Facebook during their big week. However, Facebook came back with a counter-move, rollling out some of their “F8” features a few days early. You’ve seen these changes in your feed and “home” page on Facebook. In order to assist, we’ll try to breakdown the details from Facebook’s blog post here.
(Note: Expect some more, as Facebook’s F8 ‘State of the Union’ Address is coming up Thursday, Sept. 22!
Thursday a.m. Breaking News: Word is leaking of a Music Service in your new “Ticker” on Facebook where you’ll be able to listen to music, share and listen to music with others in real-time, and more!
*so much more than 6 now!!
1. ‘Top Stories’ and ‘Most Recent’ now in one News Feed
Facebook’s blog sums things up this way: “When you visit Facebook, you should see the things you’re most interested in…” So, Facebook is trying to make sure you do that by scrapping the old Two-Option News Feed, which made you choose either Top Stories (popular stuff in order of popularity) or Most Recent (chronological order), and instead, giving you both in your one main News Feed stream. (Images below from Facebook’s blog release on the changes.)
The Old
Replacing it is a single News Feed which shows you both Top News shown at the top, and Most Recent now right underneath. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a number of hours, you also now see top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. These will be marked with a blue “tagged” corner.
The New
If you check Facebook more frequently, you’ll see the most recent stories first. In addition, in another nice move, Facebook Photos will also be bigger and easier to enjoy while you’re scrolling through.
2. The ‘Facebook Ticker’ is now Official!
The Facebook ticker is a live-feed area that sticks to the upper right corner of the screen and gives you a running play-by-play of what is happening in real time, right now. Facebook has been playing around with the Ticker in various forms for a while now on a small scale, but now it is rolling out to everyone.
Click on anything in the Facebook ticker to see the full story and comment right there, without going to another page or losing your current spot! Seeing it move in real time can be a little distracting, but, hey, you can’t say you missed it!
3. The Facebook ‘Subscribe’ Button
The Facebook Subscribe button allows you to follow news from people. It lets you set how much you want to hear from a person, and who you want to hear from. The BIG NEWS about Subscribe is that, Facebook will now allow you to subscribe to someone even if you’re not friends (or let others subscribe to you, depending on your privacy settings). So, I can subscribe to “Mark Zuckerberg” now, even though we’re not ‘yet’ friends on Facebook! So anything he chooses to post publicly, I could see in my News Feed. You’re already getting your friends’ posts in your News Feed. With the Subscribe button, you can choose how much you see from them including:
- All updates: Everything your friend posts
- Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
- Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move
You can also decide what types of updates you see. For example, you could see just photos from one friend, no stories about xyz from another, and nothing at all from someone else. You set it by visiting the person’t profile and hovering ove the Subscribe button. You will also get suggestions, like today I saw that I have a few friends subscribing to Rajon Rondo’s (Celtics pro basketball player) feed and I could easily subscribe.
To control who can see your updates anywhere on Facebook, including in ticker and News Feed, adjust your Facebook sharing control or apps settings.
- Don’t want to set each one of your friends individually? By default, all of your friends have been set to “Most Updates” which covers the majority of what you’re interested in. You can then just reset the friends you want All Posts from or those from whom you want Only Important.
4. The New ‘Friend Button’ with Smart Lists
Now whenever you friend someone on Facebook – or if you hover over the Friend Button on their Facebook profile – you have a few options you didn’t before. At the top of the list, you can easily set someone to “Close Friend” or only an “Acquaintance.” The former will automatically set their Subscription button to “All Posts” and the latter automatically sets it to “Only Important.”
Also, Facebook has anticipated that the hardest part of Friends List is that you have to curate the lists. So now, you’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.
Facebook analyzes your work history, school, family and location to determine who will be added to your Smart List.
Tired yet? Almost done, hang on!
5. The Facebook “Profile” link is gone!
The old right-hand corner staple of “Home,” “Profile” and “Account” has left! Instead of Profile, you now have a small thumbnail and name of the user you’re logged in as (which should make things clearer when you are using Facebook as a Page). Also, the “Account” has been replaced by a simple down arrow so you can access all your account, privacy and logout settings.
6. Last, but certainly not least…
There are several smaller Facebook updates that are also rolling out:
- You no longer need 25 likes on a Facebook business page in order to grab a custom URL (At least this is what they have said. This seems to be a bit “hit-or-miss” right now as I have some that I can’t get the vanity url for yet with less than 25)
- Facebook will try to not clog your inbox by now emailing you only a daily summary of the “less important” notifications instead of a e-mail for each one. If it makes you feel more alive to have a full inbox, you can change it back to individual emails on the notifications page .
- Posts or comments in another language prompt the appearance of a “translate” button.
- Posts that have been shared will now include a link you can follow to see who has shared them.
Whew, that’s a quite a list of 6+. Be aware that likely more are to come at F8 2011!
So what do you think? Are you disoriented or liking things in this latest Facebook move?