Facebook Adds In-Line Editing For Profiles

Posted by Rory Marinich on September 11th, 2007 8:00 AM

In the last week or so, Facebook gave its users the ability to edit basic profile information from within their own profiles, making users’ profiles even more accessible as a basic Facebook “control panel.”

in-line editing of personal information

Currently, only personal information is handled this way. Editing fields show up fairly quickly, and saved changes appear on the profile in seconds. It’s interesting that Facebook doesn’t even add a Save button to the mix; it fits in perfectly, however, with the site’s uncluttered design.

Is this a groundbreaking feature on Facebook? Not really. But it goes to show that Facebook is not slacking off on the job: they’re constantly tweaking their site design to make it more intuitive for their users.

(A similar little tweak, albeit one that has been around for a while, is this: hover your mouse over the “more” link for your applications, and it will expand your menu without a click. Click outside the box, and it will vanish again. Not extremely useful, but still a neat little bit.)

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2 Responses to “Facebook Adds In-Line Editing For Profiles”

These are nice little touches, but I have one more I'd love to see them add: searchable alternate names.

This would be especially useful for women, who often have a different surname as an adult than they did when they were in school. People trying to find them may not know their maiden name.

I'm in a particularly awkward situation in this regard, as I have had four different surnames in my life due to adoption, marriage and divorce. Right now, I use all four surnames as my Facebook name because I want friends from any time in my life to be able to find me. But obviously this makes for a ridiculously long facebook screen name.

I would like to see Facebook add a minimum of three extra fields for alternate surnames and/or for things like online nicks like some people use in chatrooms where that's the only name people know you by.

This way, people like me could just use their usual current two-part name and trust that people searching for us under our married name or our name before adoption (or whatever) would still be able to find us.

These are nice little touches, but I have one more I’d love to see them add: searchable alternate names.

This would be especially useful for women, who often have a different surname as an adult than they did when they were in school. People trying to find them may not know their maiden name.

I’m in a particularly awkward situation in this regard, as I have had four different surnames in my life due to adoption, marriage and divorce. Right now, I use all four surnames as my Facebook name because I want friends from any time in my life to be able to find me. But obviously this makes for a ridiculously long facebook screen name.

I would like to see Facebook add a minimum of three extra fields for alternate surnames and/or for things like online nicks like some people use in chatrooms where that’s the only name people know you by.

This way, people like me could just use their usual current two-part name and trust that people searching for us under our married name or our name before adoption (or whatever) would still be able to find us.

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