Back when Facebook first announced its new homepage redesign, it billed it as ‘real-time’, offering users their friends’ most recent activity updates as they happened. Unfortunately, the homepage wasn’t quite as real-time as many of us would have liked – while it did show the most recent updates, the page was static, and you’d have to refresh it if you wanted to see any subsequent updates.
Today Facebook is coming one step closer to live updating, with a new status message that appears towards the top of the page whenever there are new updates that you haven’t read yet. The feature will roll out to all users over the next few hours. It’s very similar to the approach being taken by Twitter search, which periodically displays how many new results have appeared since you submitted your query.
It’s an improvement, but it isn’t quite the live stream that I think many of us are envisioning. For example, the new FriendFeed (which I think is a huge step up from the old version) features a true live stream, with updates flowing down the page as they happen. It’s a bit strange at first, but it’s also far more engaging than a static page – I often find myself staring at the stream, simply so I can watch the next item to pop up (yes, I am easily amused). Of course, I’m sure Facebook is keeping a close eye on how FriendFeed’s redesign is receieved, as it hasn’t shied away from using the site for R&D before.
The snazzy image above is from Busted Tees, where you can order it on a T-shirt.
You can also subscribe to updates via SMS now
It is like twitter search results. “there are 5 more new search results, click refresh to update”.
didnt the facebook feed used to have RSS available? Why can’t I do that anymore?
This is not real live or real-time. The only thing real-time is the queue. So the difference now is that instead of refreshing the browser (F5) you now can click on the queue update notification atop the news feed.
Until this updates like FriendFeed, it will not be live or real-time.
I agree.
I also think real-time or ‘live’ streaming with AJAX on Facebook would be professional suicide. Their business model is already struggling under the popularity of serving the info they have – much less try to accomodate everyone that wants to keep a Firefox tab open on their news feed just in case their besty announces an engagement or that they just broke up with their boyfriend of 2 months.
Translation: Facebook says "those guys at friendfeed are doing some cool stuff, we’ll copy them again soon."
Who doesn’t do this? Why does everybody get their panties in a bunch? All inventions are built upon the back of previous ideas or something similar. It is how we evolve. It drives competition. Friendfeed still has to show it has long term traction. Love it all you want but it isn’t even in the Facebook or Twitter ballpark. I still haven’t found a compelling reason to use Friendfeed.
Try it out now. I like the new version much better than the old one.
facebook developers have fucked up whole concept of newsfeed in facebook. back then it was a nice newfeed with updates of photos, events, comments, relationship statues, etc, from my friends. now it shows only videos and status updates. thats it. it really got fucked up. really.
many of my friends say facebook is not useful or interesting anymore, they think its boring and sucks. good luck to mr. sugerberg.
I sort of disagree with you Scoble, you have to keep in mind Facebook did have the original idea for the news feed. It is sort of a general thing to move to real time now.
Is this some sort of trick to increase the number of pageviews per unique? It seems their developers are witty enough to use AJAX and deliver updates live. If the announcement message’s call to action is to refresh the page, I suspect this is a simple trick to falsely increase pageviews per unique.
Joe: I think they are thinking more of the general audience, you have to imagine that us Techies are a very small percentage of people that use Facebook and the average joe is the vast majority and might not like a stream of constant information from their friends. While I love it cause I am a news/tech/people junkie a lot of people like going at their own pace.
the search page has had live updates (but you have to refresh to see them) for as long as i remember there being a search.twitter.com … that has been how they do things … maybe it’s to increase pageviews (of course it will) but maybe it’s part of their ‘design philosophy’
Now Bill O’Reilly can join! **ck it!
To play us out? What does that mean, to play us out?
The FB newsfeed is noise. I just don’t give a rats ass about the quizzes you took, the drinks you gave to some one, etc. Jesus, it’s annoying. Oh, and good like with the “Hide This” option, given that it appears to be name based or something. Ick.
I don’t see why they can’t make it like the old live feed, which was dynamic and “real-time”.
It’s a real-time~waste as this staggered roll out of the feature does nothing to show the true potential. I agree with some of the comments, those with 1000+ friends are going to be inundated with app shares!
This change seems very partial, any progress on FB is good, and still the stream is far from live…
IMO the recent change to privacy settings is way more significant, allowing users to display more profile elements to “Everyone” (not sure about visibility to search engines).
Holden: Thanks, but it still is a weak (possibly well-planned) attempt to spark more page views. It worked (but ultimately failed) for AOL, so I imagine Facebook will remain the same.
Facebook could be worth $40 billion and friendfeed worth $3 billion given the huge growth and market dominance of these companies. These companies are on the forefront of the web 2.0 revolution. http://iamned.com/blog/ no recession
How about covering the obliteration of the “friends” page which showed what was updated in a quick, easy to review manner and is now replaced by more useless “find friends” garbage?
Whoever the moron is behind the re-designs they’re slowly but surely destroying functionality.
I already HAVE enough friends, so many in fact that my feed is overloaded. The only way to actually stay up to date on big events was the friends tab.
Add to that the wasted space on the home section where they have “suggestions” in the primary spot, an acceptable ad in the second, their worthless “highlights” section that no one reads – and then – FINALLY the useful birthday and events sections buried at the bottom.
These changes are idiotic.
I agree about the order of the stuff in the right sidebar. Highlights aren’t very useful (they’re just too small and I rarely care about the stuff shown) and I wish birthdays were placed higher up.
Aye, also if instead of adding friend filters (which are more or less useless) they had moved the basic update filters from the old “friends” page eg: Posted items, relationship status, etc. – stuff people actually care about – into the tabs on the left to filter the feed it wouldn’t be AS bad.
Right now my “home” feed only goes back an hour before I have to expand it. Sometimes it’s as little as 30 minutes. 80% of it is stuff I don’t care about. Status updates that are hard to read, stupid surveys, etc. – value has been heavily damaged. Right now it’s more of a glorified IM platform with photos, which is really frustrating.
It doesn’t look like Facebook has entirely rolled out the feature as it hasn’t yet hit my FB profile.
Facebook can appease those who want the live stream and those who don’t be simply adding a toggle / switch. I’d flip it on – but for those who are already worried, it’s an easy solution: flip it off.
I guess this is kinda cool, but who honestly just stares at their newsfeed waiting for updates? It’s pretty necessary.
I think this is another example of Facebook taking functionality from FriendFeed and making it fit a more mainstream audience. While we all might be able to keep up with a page that changes all of the time, my non-tech friends would probably not understand what’s going on. I actually think that the notification of new things as a link for you to choose to see more was a good product choice for a mainstream user.
it would be interesting to get an impartial UI/UX expert to give their opinion on “2 new results, click to update” vs “realtime feed”. Personally, i prefer the notification/call to action. Then i can experience realtime at *my* time – i.e. based on how fast or slow i want to consume the information. A pure realtime feed can be “wow”, but it can also be nauseating if too much info flows too quickly. The “pause” button we’re beginning to see is a clumsy keep-everyone-happy solution imo. What do the experts think?
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