Facebook launched two new features and a major design change tonight that affects all of their 9.5 million users. The new products, called News Feed and Mini Feed, are designed to change what Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls Facebook’s old “Encyclopedic interface,” where pages mostly just list off information about people, to a stream of fresh news and attention content about the user, her friends and activities.
I went by the Facebook offices on Monday to see a demo of what’s just been launched. The two products show information about people and things as they occur. The first, News Feed, appears on the user’s “Home” (admin) page and shows new photos posted by friends, relationship status changes, people joinging groups, etc. It basically removes the need to go to every friend’s site every day to see what changes occured to their profile. In many ways this reminds me of my RSS stream of news that I view every day in NetNewsWire, for the blogs and other sites I care about.
The second product, Mini Feed, is a variation of News Feed but shows information only for a single user and appears directly on their profile page. It gives visitors to the page a quick view of what’s new for that user.
Like everything on Facebook, both of these products are subject to the standard Facebook privacy settings. This means only people you allow to view this data will be able to see it. What appears is based on who you are, who they are, and what rules are set.
These changes will confuse users for a while, but I agree with Ruchi Sanghvi on the Facebook blog who says “These features are not only different from anything we’ve had on Facebook before, but they’re quite unlike anything you can find on the web.” It’s interesting because Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to. It may mean less page views for Facebook in the short run as users rarely have to leave their home/admin page to see what’s going on with friends, but if it makes users love Facebook more (is that possible?), it’ll pay off in the end.
The screen shot below shows the News Feed rolling in on a Facebook user’s home/admin page.
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I like this design. Social-RSS…
Although interesting and certainly useful, I’ve currently found that there’s actually no way to change your privacy settings such that you turn off this news feed (I’m not sure I want my friends to know the history of all the wall messages I’ve posted on, or the precise moment I’ve changed from in a relationship to single, etc.) - the only way to do so is to manually delete each news entry after you’ve done the act… a bit tedious at this point…
I’m mixed as to how much I like this change, although it’s good to see facebook still innovating.
hi mi nem is linda and howroyu heheh
There should be some customization options.
I think Facebook “gets it” more than any other popular SN site on the web.
Kudos to them on their new features.
I agree with Sam, there should be a way to turn it off. It just seems to flashy and annoying to be on the Home page. I’d rather just see my profile.
quite unlike anything you can find on the web?
why don’t you log into friendster and look under friend updates, this feature was launched last september.
then a few months later, linkedin jumped on the bandwagon - go to their homepage and look under the inbox.
hmmm, not a whole lot of innovation here, surprised it took facebook this long to catch up, not exactly moving at lightning speed are you, zuckerberg?
The new social feed feature is extremely invasive and there does not seem to be a way to turn it off. You can manually delete the feed entries from your profile page, but that is quite tedious.
Facebook is one huge privacy nightmare. Not only does it urge you to divulge as many details as possible about your private life, but it is making it increasingly easier for other users to track you. The friend approval system will prevent some of this, but people rarely reject requests. Additionally every person that went to your university is by default your friend, whether you know them or not…
This will make other college students (my friends) think way more carefully before doing normal facebook-esque things that they may not appreciate everyone knowing about… ie signing 10 walls in 2 minutes or flirting shamelessly with a girl other than one’s girlfriend (using wall posts etc).
Also, people don’t really care about changes to many of their “friends” facebook profiles because they aren’t really friends.
Downgrade.
Speak for yourself, Daniel. I use facebook to keep up with real friends and it’s nice that I can actually identify what changes have been made to a profile. I’m not saying that everyone is like me, but not everyone falls under your sweeping generalization.
Smells like Vox’s Neighborhood.
I agree… although these new features are definitely slick and nice to see… it’s really, really, going to turn a lot of people off from doing their daily business on facebook such as writing on walls, poking, and flirting with a million people… people simply don’t want others privy to that sort of info. There should have been custom settings in place before they rolled this out. I’m not too sure if facebook users are savvy enough to figure it out yet, but once they do…. it’s going to anger a lot of ‘em! And it’s going to hinder communication, not increase it. Overall, great additions.
Dave of Mind Petals
isn’t some of that like Y!360’s friend-update thing?
This brings creeping to a whole new level…
it’s really annoying at best — do I care if a friend of mine posted on some random persons wall? no.
How FB has gotten this far is unbelievable to me. The site is poorly designed at best, advertising does not convert (+ crappy ctrs), total lack of innovation, little global movement (even with Huge money from Accel), ++++++
I think they should have taken the $750 million and got out of town.
Either people are too paranoid of the “what-ifs” and the “I’m not sure” or I’m just apathetic about these. Until I start hearing terrible stories that occur due to this change, I don’t see anything wrong with it. As far as pageviews, I actually think it might increase it rather than decrease it; when you hear a friend is going to an event, you might want to click that event for more information now that you otherwise will never hear of.
These changes are pretty cool and would definitely increase facebook’s overall value among its users.
“Either people are too paranoid of the “what-ifs” and the “I’m not sure” or I’m just apathetic about these.”
It doesn’t matter if the concerns are valid, if users perceive problems, you have a problem.
And a lot of sites have been doing this sort of thing, so it’s hardly revolutionary. The guy who said these are quite unlike anything you can find on the web must be using only Facebook for the past year.
My god this is an awesome upgrade. What will they think of next?
The similarities between what we’re working on for what we call “People” in Flock and the News Feed that Facebook just launched are striking. It will be interesting to see what kind of feedback comes from their implementation.
interesting that if page views and time spent on the site is no longer the ‘currency’, what should be the new metrics? user satisfaction? how do we compare social networking sites?
Friend’ster had this feature for almost a year. So has Yahoo 360. This is not an innovation, and not particularly newsworthy.
The “news feed” concept is on Yahoo360 for quite a long time.
Definitely a nice update, though I think the news feed can almost be too overloaded with information. Settings would be nice to control what’s displayed.
I take exception to the assertion that “they’re quite unlike anything you can find on the web.”
The combination of granular access restrictions, friend activity aggregation and aggregation of activity on your account - together with blogs, files, photos, podcasting, social networking, customisation, wider RSS aggregation and tagging - has been available in Elgg for around two years. Elgg is open source, has no advertising, and is a platform that can be run on infrastructure owned by an institution or student organisation. Within a month it will also support OpenID for decentralised communication and participation.
Cool feature… BUT HOW CAN I TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!
It’s all about Information Flow. Personally, I’m a fan of the feature. The real question is, will the other 7.5 million college students put up with it? Yes, the privacy settings for it, is one click away, but we all know how hard it is to get users to add even “more more click” to their lives. Should be interesting to watch.
-JLB
Dan Wilson and Andrew Smith are now lovers. 1:29am
Kevin McCormick added new photos. 1:10am
Random pics from the Gamma Phi lesbian orgy…
Dan Wilson joined the group UC Berkeley Rainbow Coalition. 1:09am
Ximena Hernandez removed her drunken profile picture. 9:22pm
Bobby Williams wrote a new note. 9:22pm
It’s a tough life.
I was at a party this Saturday over at Yale. I thought things between Mandy and I were good. We’ve been going out for a month. She said she had to run to the Hamptons to see her dying cousin. Wentworth, Bartholomew and I hit the Psi Upsilon frat party. We get there and low and behold, there’s Mandy getting wild with one of Yale’s football players…
Jeremey Hayes committed suicide. 7:45pm
Jeremey Hayes left the group Harvard Honor Roll Students. 7:28pm
Daniel Jones added “smoking blunts and playing video games” to his favorite activities. 7:08pm
Daniel Jones is now single. 6:48pm
Realist, yes! ;D
Friendster, Yahoo360, LinkedIN have had this for awhile. Realist — love your post!
Not sure I get how people are saying this isn’t revolutionary. Features like mini-feed may exist elsewhere but nothing like News Feed exists. It isn’t just a log of your friends actions it picks the stories you are most likely to want to see based on your behavior on the site.
I also don’t get how people think it is so creepy given that NOTHING is visible that wasn’t visible before. We aren’t exposing anything new, just doing a better job of exposing what was already visible. If people don’t want information to be so public, they should send messages instead of posting on walls and use privacy to limit visibility of photo albums and such.
Finally, if you don’t care about a story, then maybe you shouldn’t be friends with the person involved! Seriously, Facebook’s value is more than random flirtation, it is in connecting real people who care about each other online.
As a user I’m kind of turned off to it now. I know it wasn’t hard for someone else to go through my pages and see who else I had been talking to, but now everything i do on it is spoon fed to everyone who logs in.
As a friend just said to me “Why do you need to know that much?”. I know, because you can, but still..
Just my opinion.
Good article though.
Join the online group “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)”.
Andrew there is a huge difference between “visible” and “promoted on all my friend’s homepages”.
As everyone has said, nothing new, been done all over the place. Facebook is just moving their homepage away from the static dashboard that it has been. Behind the trend, not ahead of it. Next…
“These features are not only different from anything we’ve had on Facebook before, but they’re quite unlike anything you can find on the web.”
That’s a joke…other sites, like LostCherry.com, have had an instant alert feature for at least half a year. LostCherry.com makes nice use of AJAX to make all interactivity instantaneous from a user’s homepage.
Back by popular demand. The saga continues:
Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the wall for the group $2 BILLION OR BUST. 6:25pm
Mark Zuckerberg has poked all the hot girls on Facebook. 6:14pm
Daniel Jones tagged Christie Harris in one photo. 6:01pm
“SLUT!!!” for “Pic of me and my new gf Jenna”
Willy Franks commented on Tara Henley’s photo “Can you really see my nipple in this pic?” 5:47pm
Denice James joined the group Professor Hank’s Female Only Tutoring Group. 5:20pm
Christie Harris wrote a new note. 5:11pm
I hate guys!!
I hate guys. They pretend like they love you but when push comes to shove, they just hurt you and only care about themselves. When I met Daniel in PSY 1703 (Human Sexuality) I thought he was the perfect guy. Nice, caring, generous. He was so into me the first time we made love in the dorms. Everything changed when I got pregnant…
Christie Harris is now single. 5:05pm
Christie Harris had an abortion. 4:21pm
Christie Harris and Daniel Jones were seen arguing in Annenberg Hall. 3:24pm
Irene O’Conner has joined the group Homework for Sale - Fast Turnaround. 3:05pm
Irene O’Conner has woken up. 2:55pm
Andrew B:
Based on your comments, it appears you work for Facebook? A suggestion: don’t argue with your users. Telling your users what they want is a huge business mistake. Effective companies let their users them tell them what they want. It’s very surprising that a company with a huge staff and lots of funding would apparently roll out a new feature that one could reasonably expect to be controversial without polling users, doing focus groups or at the very least giving users the option to turn it off.
Also telling them how to use your service (don’t do this, do this instead) is extremely dumb. Are you that out of touch with how your users utilize Facebook?
Facebook may have more value than random flirtation, but it’s naive to think that flirtation/hooking up isn’t one of the most popular uses of the service.
And while you’re here, I’d just like to extend a big thanks to the entire Facebook team. It has made getting laid in college so much easier. In fact, this past weekend I hooked up with some hot Sigma Kappa girls in Chico all thanks to your service! If you could add some feature that enables guys to rate how easy girls are, that would be killer!
This has to be the worst idea I’ve ever seen. Having your every move on facebook automatically show up on someone’s (your distantly related friends) “news feed” every time they log in is creepy/weird and just horrendous.
I seriously think facebook shot themselves in the foot with this one.
All of the Web 2.0 analysts that think this is “cool” or that they’re bringing social networking to a new level doesn’t understand the site, clearly isn’t a college student, and obviously can’t comprehend what its like to be a college student in a day and age where there is little privacy left to begin with.
Previously, if you cared about one of your hundreds of friends you’d visit their profile and interact.
Now information is automatically displayed about exactly how many wall posts they made, when they made them, and what they said all in consolidated sparknote-esque form. This wasn’t really available previously unless you really were a stalker and took the hours to view the profiles of all of a certain person’s friends, looked through their walls, and noted down the times they posted and what they said.
P.S. There are already tons of facebook groups with hundreds and hundreds of members dedicated to making it known that this feature sucks, and people are truly pissed off.
Just want to reiterate that the privacy setting on facebook apply to this data stream as well. The settings are up to the user.
The complaints Yahoo360 and LinkedIN, etc, got died down quickly, if they had any at all. They’ve had the feature for months, and everyone seems pretty content.
People like the feature it seems. I think there are even tools that let you do this on MySpace (3rd party scrapers that tell you when something is updated). Nice implementation of a ‘me-too’ feature.
I hear video might be big someday too. Maybe Facebook can get ahead of the curve and create a site where people upload videos and…
looking at these facebook snapshots i immediately (finally!) realized what those darned teenagers like so much about that darned myspace - it’s the essential creativity of the pages. look at the typical myspace page and it’s likely to look aesthetically horrible, but it will be *uniquely* ugly, at least. look at the profile page for a person on any other community website it’ll look uniquely utilitarian - square - conformist - adult - boring.
Somebody count the decrease in wall postings over the coming days?
Anyone else find it humorous that half of the comments here are saying that Facebook is late to the game with these features and the other half are saying that they suck? Can’t win either way.
Is that what they call a ‘FaceRiver’?
I think so.
Facebook is good for 2 things: Stalking people and remembering your friends’ birthdays. This feature only makes it much more fun/easier for the creepy stalkers. Now they won’t have to continously browse pages, but can easily find what’s been updated. This is the worst feature ever implemented to facebook, and I am sure even more stalkers will now arise.
Well, anyone saying that these features are late to the game don’t realize how entirely different they are from the supposed predecessors. Facebook has become the de facto standard for information about *people* in college (and, of course, working towards everyone). What makes this feature so compelling is that the first thing people do is go to facebook with things like relationship changes, events, etc. This makes ‘river’ actually have valuable and desirable (for close friends, at least) content.
I’d say the only issue here is that it exposes to users how much facebook actually knows and keeps track of. Of course there’s going to be an initial shockwave from people - already groups like “WTF facebook” have sprung up - but overtime I would imagine it works out. Anyones guess. Notes certainly haven’t picked up from what I can tell. What this additionally shows us, though, is the gap between what technologists think consumers want (or are ready for) and what consumers want (*). Maybe if every college student had an RSS reader, this would be an easier step for them to take in. I was addicted right away. Most of the negativity probably just falls into the “people hate change” category… so let’s just wait and see.
I do agree that there are a few privacy issues, and I think it was a bit shortsighted to not implement a disable feed feature to some degree. Other than that, I think it’s great.
As a college student, I can say everyone I have talked to about this seems to hate it. There is already a “Bring the Old Facebook back” group that is steadily gaining members. At least enable a feature to turn the feed off. I have no desire to see where one of my friends posted a comment. I get what you Andrew B is saying about FB being a place to connect with real people, but you have to keep in mind that many college kids just add people in order to have as many FB friends as possible. I know I have people I never talk to as friends and don’t feel like going through my friends list and deleting them. I like Facebook but do not want to dedicate that much time to it.
“…where pages mostly just list off information about people, to a stream of fresh news and attention content about the user, HER friends and activities.”
Who have you been stalking Michael?
steve_ray, I still didn’t see you point about how these features on facebook are entirely different from the supposed predecessors. It sounds like what you are saying is that the feature itself is the same but the content is different on facebook. More tangential wouldn’t you say?
I think it’s cool. The old home page was just wasted space anyway. And Facebooker’s always get upset when ANYTHING in the UI changes, so initial reaction is not really a good guage of whether it was in fact a good or bad change. I think it’ll grow on ‘em.
The concept of an update feed from your friends and interests is not new, nor unlike anything else on the web. Match.com implemented it on their homepage. Also, photo sharing site Ringo.com uses it as the main premise of the site.