Time for a Change – Zuckerberg Reveals New Facebook Updates at F8

By: Mallorie Rosenbluth

Perhaps the most stunning part about F8 (besides Zuckerberg’s superfluous use of the word “serendipity”) was the CEO’s walk through the past, present and future of Facebook. The first 5 years of Facebook, said Zuckerberg, was about connecting users and increasing numbers. Now, as Facebook tackles the latter half of a decade, its focus is on social applications and increasing the depth of engagement.  As social media marketers and avid players in the space, we are constantly working to help ourselves – and the brands we partner with – increase engagement and make more meaningful connections in the space. True to their mission of making the world more open and connected, the following changes will forever alter the way we experience Facebook.

1)      Timeline – all past changes to the user profile pale in comparison to the introduction of the Timeline. Zuckerberg describes the various iterations of the staple feature over the years as such: the first version of the profile was like the first 5 minutes of a conversation – your introductions; the next version in 2008 acted more like the next 15 minutes where you catch up with your friend about what you’ve been up to; today’s Timeline will serve as the first several hours where you tell each other about key milestones and highlights of your life. There will be many details in the most recent occurrences followed by snapshots of earlier parts of your life – all displayed visually. Think about it like the Dolorean of your life; a feature allowing users to build, and share, their past and present. The way this is described and showcased reminds me of Intel’s Museum of Me application released earlier this year. And Facebook, doing what Facebook does best, makes that application nothing but a memory as its own functionality and brilliance of understanding how people want to connect rises as a victor in capturing individual users’ stories in the online social space.

No stranger to taking heat from privacy missteps, the Facebook team didn’t fail to mention that users will be able to control who sees what in their individual timelines. Users can also add images and elements to create the story they want to tell. This will certainly take time for a user to complete, which means you can bet the average amount of time a person spends on the site daily will increase. They’ll probably want to look at their friends’ Timelines too. Yes, there’s a revenue model in here.

The new Timeline feature is currently in beta for developers only and users can expect the roll-out to happen in the next few weeks.

2)      Ticker – Remember the uproar that was created when the Newsfeed first launched? It was pandemonium in the space as groups and pages sprung up, demanding “old” Facebook return. Now, imagine your Facebook experience without the Newsfeed. Despite users’ initial resistance to the biggest platform changes, the Facebook team with Zuck in the lead, has an intuitive understanding of how people and businesses want to leverage technology to connect socially. Through the Newsfeed and EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook essentially figured out how to give us the content that was most relevant to us. The Ticker takes this a step further and now provides a filter; a way for users to cut through the clutter of meaningless updates and actions from friends to give you the most meaningful posts (i.e.  I may not care that you liked a mutual friend’s picture, but I am interested in what your most recent status update is). Perhaps taking a dig at Twitter, Zuckerberg promises we can now update about the things we do without annoying our friends.

The Ticker is already live on users’ profiles, found directly above the latest iteration of the chat feature.

3)      Application Permissions – because they’re never the group to avoid controversy, Facebook of course roles out a feature or two that makes its users a little uncomfortable. This time around, it’s the updates to the applications feature. In today’s announcement, we find out that now,applications require only a single permission to post content about your activities on your profile. Back in the old days, you had to allow an application to take this liberty each and every time. Now, you’re one click from sharing each and every time you use an application. This could potentially be very annoying with all those updates to the Newsfeed, but of course the new Ticker solves for that problem. Slick move, FB.

4)      De-emphasis of the “Like” button – Thanks to Facebook, “like”-ing has become a way of life. It’s on over 100,000 websites and we click the Like button with more ease than we ever typed in a URL.  But over the last few months in particular, there has been a lot of talk (and jokes) about actually “like”-ing everything. Sometimes the like verb just doesn’t make sense. Now developers have the power to turn any action into any verb (what Facebook is calling Gestures). Now if you just read an article you can say you Read it (instead of awkwardly “like”-ing an article about unemployment rates soaring in the US, not exactly something someone likes, right?). You can say that you’re watching a certain show, and pretty much whatever verb a developer can come up with (that’s FB-appropriate of course). This leads to the final big announcement…

5)      Movies and movies – If there was any doubt that Facebook was slowly making every other social network extinct, it’s this feature right here. With its partnerships with Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and others; you can now share what you’re watching and listening to with your friends in your Ticker (see ya Get Glue) and even better, your friends can join you. You now never have to go to a concert with your friends again because you can simultaneously listen to the same songs on Spotify while Facebook chatting and reminiscing about your lives via the Timeline.

F8 is full of the biggest announcements Facebook makes all year. Today’s announcements surely shook the online social world in a big way. What do you think of the latest changes? Let’s hear it in the comments!