September 23, 2011 •mattd
At the recent F8 conference, Facebook‘s head honcho Mark Zuckerberg used his keynote speech to announce a wealth of changes to the site.
Many users have already expressed disappointment following changes to the news feed and layout that had taken place in the last week or so.
Here’s everything you need to know about the latest Facebook changes:
1. Your Profile Will Be Changed By The ‘Timeline’
You almost certainly can’t remember what your original profile looked like when you first signed up to Facebook, as it’s been one of the features that has changed the most over the years. However the latest change is the most drastic yet, as Facebook is introducing Timeline – essentially a chronological stream of information about you — your status updates, photos, where you’ve been — right back to when you were born! It’s aiming to become the story of your whole life and is encouraging users to post older photos from their childhood, to essentially become a scrapbook of your life. You will be able to highlight a star next to statuses or photos that you deem most important.
Timeline has yet to be rolled out and is still in a beta phase that you have to opt-in to at the moment – however in the near future it will replace your existing profile completely.
2. ‘Liking’ Is About To Get More Interesting.
Facebook is set to introduce ‘Gestures‘ – which basically means that you can use other verbs as buttons instead of just ‘like’. For example you might be ‘watching’ the football. Or ‘reading’ a magazine. In my opinion this could lead to too much information as users now have the option to share so much more – however the new ‘ticker’ in the top-right corner is designed to handle more ‘lightweight’ news, and the ‘subscribe’ options allow you to filter the data that you want to see. Still no ‘dislike’ button though!
3. Watch TV and movies, and listen to music – with your friends – in real time.
Facebook’s quest to have you doing anything you can do on the web within the site itself has taken another huge step forward as they have announced partnerships that enable you to watch a show on Hulu, listen to a song on Spotify, or check out a story on Yahoo News for example. While you’re doing this, the ticker will tell your friends what you’re doing and vice-versa allowing you to share the experience with them immediately just by clicking the link.
What do you think? Have they gone too far? Made too many changes at once? Let me know your thoughts below!