The Fresh Face of Facebook

The biggest news in the tech world last week was the fifth Facebook f8 conference. Well, it had full rights to be the most discussed event; after all, Facebook is the most popular social network today, and with its longest and most promising feature list announced last Thursday creating the biggest change ever in the history of social networking, it is headed towards gaining control over its 800 million users’ deeds on the internet and becoming the most important part of the internet.

While a few of the new features seem like responses to Google+ features or inspired from them, some of the bigger ones have a lot of effort and time put in, and one would assume they were being worked upon for quite some months, maybe years.



At the risk of being banal, let me quickly list down the new Facebook features, including the ones already (quietly) launched just before the f8, in no particular order:

• The news ticker.: This is the vertical ticker on the right side that shows a continuous stream of all the non-important updates—someone was tagged in somebody’s photo, a third person liked the same, a fourth reshared it, and other similar kind of activities. The ticker comes in two sizes, one, with resizeable height sharing space with the list of most contacted friends and chat, and second, a less conspicuous half-screen mode above the ads, when the chat sidebar is hidden, or the screen is not wide enough. Hovering/clicking over a ticker item opens a small popup overlay containing the complete share, and you can like, comment, or share from within.
• Fixed header.: The original blue Facebook bar now remains fixed on the top of the page even as you scroll down. Contains only the search bar, your profile photo and name, and a menu for settings and to log out. This is clearly inspired by the Google’s black bar that appears on all Google products but remains fixed only on Google+. Another static component on the new design is the ticker talked about in 1 above.
• Top stories and Recent stories.: The news feed is divided into two parts: the top stories that comprise of status updates and photos from your family and closest friends (ones you interact with the most on FB), and a recent stories section that contains all the other stuff from other friends. The top stories are also decided on how frequently do you visit Facebook. (I had expected Twitter-like behaviour, but the number of top and recent stories 'since your last visit' does not reset to 0 when you see them, and does not change if you frequently visit Facebook.)
• The timeline.: This is, by far, the biggest change in your Facebook profile. Till now, the wall contained all your activity on Facebook, but the important things slip off the page. The timeline algorithmically weeds off the unimportant stuff and sews up the important ones into a colourful life history. You can increase/decrease attention to your stories or add new/delete old stuff from your timeline, and even add your apps to your timeline. Quoting the official blog, the timeline is an "easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect all your best moments in a single place". Timeline is in beta mode now, and you need to be a developer to create one for yourself. (Create a sample app following these steps on TechCrunch or Mashable.)
• Bigger photos.: Picture sharing has been improved. Photo size is increased from 720px to 960px, and the black background is changed to a white one in the theatre mode. Also, an album that appears in your timeline shows three thumbnails, one large (267px) and two small (125px each). Another feature that reminds of Google+.
• Subscribers.: Another major change, this introduces asymmetric sharing in Facebook. You may subscribe to someone's public posts even if they don't subscribe/befriend you. Also, you may choose what type of content (all/most/important updates) you see. With Twitter and Google+ allowing this, Facebook had to finally implement the feature, though it is more polished than both Twitter and Google+. On the flip side, you have two different kinds of connections now: friends and subscribers.
• Improved Friend Lists.: A direct rip-off from Google+ Circles, you can now limit your shares to only a certain list(s) of friends, and even view updates selectively from lists that now list on the left panel. A feather in the cap is the smart lists, that create automatically for your work, school, family, city, and close friends based on your friends' profiles and the friend suggestions for lists. (Smart lists worked very well with me; gave me pretty accurate suggestions.
• Birthday reminders.: Albeit a minor feature, a useful one. All your birthday reminders are shown at the right, above the ads, below the ticker, and let you wish them with a single click—a small overlay similar to one on ticker opens up containing all your friends whose birthday falls today, and you can write individual messages to each of them.
• Read. Yahoo News, Washington Post Social Reader: Yahoo News has tied up with Facebook to let people discover and share news and information on Yahoo through updates on Facebook. Yahoo News has added a Facebar on the top that shows all friends that are connected using FB; clicking on their faces takes you to what they are reading. Washington Post also launched its Social Reader that has the Facebook bar on the top, friends using the Social Reader and what they are reading on the left, and an app ticker on the right that shows only the app activities of your friends, in addition to news content sourced from different media companies.
• Listen. Spotify: Spotify announced its integration with Facebook in f8, and now onwards whenever you listen to music on Spotify shows up in the ticker. Your friends can click on the co-located play button and listen to the same music with you in sync! Eventually, all music activity would come in a music dashboard towards the left on your page, that will contain feeds from all music partners.
• Watch. Hulu and Netflix: In addition to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, the f8 also saw Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talking about Facebook integration. You will be able to see what TV shows or movies your friends have been watching on Netflix, and click on the movie to watch it right there, within Facebook. Hulu's new canvass app provides a similar functionality to videos, and lets friends discover videos, watch them simultaneously, and discuss them without ever leaving—you guessed it right—Facebook.
• Open Graph. Read. Listen. Watch.: The new Open Graph is going to enable apps that primarily focus on two types of things. The first is help you create your timeline, and the second is helping you discover new things with your friends. The discovery is done in three ways, with frictionless experiences, realtime serendipity, and finding patterns in your friends' activities. Building an Open Graph app gives you the opportunity to deeply integrate into the core Facebook experience, including Timeline, News Feed, and Ticker. This is exactly what the aforementioned Yahoo, Spotify, and Neftlix are doing. Another important feature the Open Graph will provide developers is the use of any verb to for an action button, and not only the ubiquitous Like button.
• Slow Poke and I am not really friends with these people: A slow poke reaches the receiver in 24 hours so you could withdraw it in case you changed minds. While this was a fictitious feature Andy Samberg made up at the opening of f8, the not-really-friends is possible by creating a circle list by that name for those people. Who are not really friends.

Ha! With those many new features, and a few implemented from Google Plus—the Facebook PRD—Zuck Dawg with rock-solid, cut and greased abs, is all set to rule the internet. Even though I was extremely happy with Google+ at its launch, and maintained a month post-release that Google+ could never outrun Facebook, and established another month later that Google was late by half a decade. This post corroborates that belief. Google+ is competing with the Facebook of yore.

PS: Here is the 01 hour 41 minutes long f8 conference (with captions), in case you want to Read/Watch/Listen: