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When the new Facebook homepage launched yesterday, most people immediately noticed the change to the stream however there was another upgraded feature: profile suggestions. For some time now Facebook has included a progress bar which states how much of a user’s profile has been completed. Now whenever you view profile suggestions you’ll also see suggestions for you to encourage your friends to become more engaged.
The new feature aims to get users on Facebook more active. While we aren’t quite sure what Facebook uses to determine how “active” a user is, the application of game theory to Facebook engagement should help to increase overall usage on the site. This type of attention to detail is exactly what makes Facebook so successful. Not only does the company focus on optimizing the viral growth of the site but they also do extensive testing to increase overall engagement.
As far as I can tell saying how “active” a user is, is based on how much of their profile has been completed. However I’m not completely sure. Naomi Gleit wrote about the new features yesterday afternoon:
Other new Suggestions will include friends who may need help becoming more active on the site. For instance, they may have an empty wall because no one has posted on it yet. You will see just how much help your friends need by checking out the progress bar located below their profile picture on their profile. You can help them by writing on their Wall or sending them a message, so they have a chance to get involved in sharing as well.
It will be interesting to see if users take the newly suggested actions (such as writing on a less active friend’s wall). Do you respond to these new suggestions from Facebook? Do you think it will increase the overall level of activity on the site?
You really don’t want to hear my comments on this and all the other “improvements.” They are X-rated!
The least active Facebook users are those who have died. Today, I’ve seen too many status updates from friends distraught over Facebook’s suggestions they help their dead loved one’s become more active.
I don’t like the new changes, what I’m seeing is a “live feed” or “news feed” instead of the home page. Everyone is very confused over the change and I believe that we would like to go BACK to the way it was before.
Why fix it when it’s not broken? I think that they need to look at the way that the applications/games work (or not) instead of the way that our pages look.
the new updates are messed up! … they try and categorize everything and in the end just confuse users more!
This is so half-baked it isn’t even funny and for Mark Zuckerberg to stand up at Startup School and say that the best thing you can do as a startup is to give people what they want? This seems to fly int he face of that. I find it annoying at best and useless at worst. You tend not to speak to people for a reason and this only goes to further prove that most contacts on facebook aren’t even friends or close acquaintances.
quiero estar aqui y tener muchos amigos