Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and others announced revolutionary and supercool changes to Facebook.
According to Zuck in his introduction to the keynote:
- A record 500 million people used Facebook the same day. We’re connected now. The next era will be defined by the social apps that use these connections.
- The profile is the heart of the Facebook experience, and people invest a lot in their profile. The old 2004 profile: How you introduce yourself to people, the first five minutes of your conversation.
- People wanted more ways to express themselves, so we added the stream: That’s the next 15 minutes of a conversation — what you’ve been doing recently — which came in the 2008 new profile.
- But there’s more to us, to our deepest conversations. You want to express the story of your life in terms of the most important and meaningful parts of your life — this is the heart of your Facebook experience.
The biggest new element today is timeline, which Facebook has been working on for a year, although the apps changes and implications of the new GraphRank are huge as well.
Timeline is the story of your life, in a single page
- The timeline is about stories.
- A new class of apps will work with timeline, the ticker, and the news feed.
- This is about a new way to express yourself, and as you can see, it’s much richer visually.
And as Chris Cox, vice president of products, said, infographics have become very important — visualizing huge amounts of data. The timeline is about doing that for a person. What would a year in review look like for a person? Scrapbooks have been around for centuries, and this is a similar activity.
The timeline brings to mind the half dozen or so third-party outfits that have been selling coffeetable books based on your own profile — Facebook’s giving you this same content for free, on the site where you can share it with your friends.
You can navigate the Facebook timeline with the time slider.
- Blue dots: more important things
- Gray dots: less important things
To add stuff to your timeline:
- Click on timeline, composer, then post.
- Content for timeline can come from apps.
You can add a major event to your timeline. We’ll get more detail about this when it’s widely released.
Apps can help you summarize activity into Reports
Mobile apps work with the timeline and can give you monthly or annual reports.
Express Yourself
Zuck says your Facebook profile should be “a place that feels like your home.”
You highlight and curate your stories to express who you really are. Your cover photo is the big wide photo at the top — it should be a unique moment in your life.
You still have your profile picture.
To add a cover photo, you first click on the star (which also tells Facebook this is important) and you get a big photo to use as a cover.
The timeline lets you control:
- What you show;
- How you display it, and
- Who can see it.
The way timelines look can be very unique — a traveler versus a musician versus a runner. Here is a musician’s timeline:
Open Graph, Apps, and Connections
Facebook has created a new class of apps to deal with the next version of open graph. Facebook’s mission is to make world more open and connected. They want you to have a more personal experience.
As of 2007, you could connect by liking. Now they want you to connect any way you want. What if you read a book but you don’t want to like it?
What if you watch but don’t want to like a movie? You might not feel that strongly about it, and you might not want it to go into the Newsfeed to annoy your friends.
Now you’ll be able to eat a meal, hike a trail, and so on, and the activity shows up in the news feed . This means Facebook is adding verbs to the connections in the social graph.
The company believes this will create many, many more connections in the graph. It also helps you express yourself in new ways — you don’t want to annoy friends with boring stuff.
The ticker is a lightweight stream for less important stuff — a socially acceptable way to express lightweight activity.
- activity into ticker and timeline but not news feed.
- .share goes into news feed.
You can define an action and publish in this new class of social apps. There are a lot of naturally social actions — communication and games — and there are already social apps for these. But there are not-so-social activities… private things — medical, finance — and there are few or no apps for these.
Build New Apps And Rethink Industries: Music, Movies, and News
- Frictionless: You can now add activity to the timeline without seeing a share box pop up. You can still publish, but you can add lightweight activity without the share box. Permissions: adding apps to add activities.
- Real-time serendipity: This is about the ticker. Friends are already doing lots of things — we just aren’t aware of them. We’ll find out about them in our ticker: “Oh, friend is listening to song, I’ll listen too at the same time.”
- Patterns: This is about the News feed. Sometimes people do stuff that’s more rare or interesting (playlist created), or lots of friends listen to the same artist — this goes into new feed.
Music: Now you can chat and listen with your friends, regardless of the music player. You can find new commonalities with a friend.
The key to making the music biz work is trying to help you discover songs to buy more content than you would have otherwise. Discover music through your friends.
Zuck had the CEOs of Spotify and Netflix come up and talk about how social will accelerate what they do. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, he might watch a movie he’d been putting off if a guy he was meeting later that day was watching it now. That’s a great commonality and conversation starter.
This works for reading news, too. You can see what friends are reading, such as via The Washington Post social reader looks like this:
Taking Games to the Next Level
Games have been most successful app thus far. Now, there’s no share box — activities go straight to the ticker. And more information will be visible to friends. Mike plays a specific word in Words with Friends while playing Carl, and I can see that word and even a picture of the board.
Integrating This Into Your Apps, and OMG GraphRank!
Very easy: Decide what action in your app fits into the social graph, and add an add to timeline button in your app. Facebook is launching six templates and a flexible query engine. You can add geolocation to the activities. It works everywhere — Web, mobile, iPad, everywhere.
App discovery: If people like it, they should see it. You shouldn’t need tricks or gimmicks for people to find them.
GraphRank may be the new EdgeRank. What do I want to see in the news feed versus someone’s timeline? Different types of relationships work differently — work friends versus family, for example. And this is probably going to integrate the new friends lists and family categorizations.
App developers will see what activities people do the most and what annoys people.
Brian Carter is author of The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money On Facebook.
I loved it, the guy's a genius! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zuckerbergs-Law/25...
Comment by mungodo — September 22, 2011 @ 3:14 pm
Have yet to find anyone who likes the new format, I liked the way the old list worked, new stories were always at the top and tbh were more accurately posted, now we seem to have a lot of New stories and half the posts missing, not good for games. I don't want to sunscribe to people, I have the people on my page who I want there and want to follow. I don't want to see what everyone is commenting on, I could see that just as easily before. Why do we keep being forced into all these changes to make sharing easier? I don't want to share, I just want to play the games I do on here, with occasional comments to friends. Thats all.
Comment by Tracy Goodwin — September 22, 2011 @ 3:18 pm
How will these changes affect how brands market to consumers on the platform? Or will it even be a factor at all? Are there going to be any forthcoming changes that will make it easier for brands to use storytelling on Facebook?
Comment by Kerstin Burns — September 22, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
Thanks for the warning. Oh wait…
Comment by lifeofbex — September 22, 2011 @ 3:23 pm
Not one of my friends likes the new format: Here is just one example of the type of complaint that is doing the rounds:-
Facebook, you're not near as smart as you think you are. Your algorithms for deciding what I want to see, who I want to talk to or what I think is important are 99.999% of the time the exact polar opposite of what I want.
Comment by Maggie — September 22, 2011 @ 3:26 pm
I love the new format.
Comment by Heller the Home Seller — September 22, 2011 @ 3:27 pm
[...] Zuck and others just announced some huge changes to Facebook, right on the heels of yesterday’s shocking changes to the News Feed and introduction of the Ticker. The new Timeline will continue the journey where the Profile has taken us, and apps will integrated new verbs possibly changing the univerb LIKE culture that has predominated. CTO Bret Taylor introduced GraphRank, which sounds like the next EdgeRank. [...]
Pingback by Do Timeline, Ticker and GraphRank Break Facebook Marketing? — September 22, 2011 @ 3:39 pm
I don't like the new format at all, I liked it just fine the old way. I don't like the ticker either, its distracting and I don't care what games my friends are playing. Now the ticker is constantly on the go with comments to people's posts and pictures. HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT. Thanks for asking if we wanted that FACEBOOK!!!!!!
Comment by Crystal — September 22, 2011 @ 4:23 pm
sorry about this, but wasn't permitted to post all I wanted to write in one go – here is some of the rest:
Everything you do to try to simplify things only complicates things more. Every attempt you make to improve things inevitably ends up in a HUGE step backwards. Take for example the new way Facebook displays pictures when clicked on that now appear initially as a compressed blurry mess reminiscent of the internet circa 1990.
Comment by Maggie — September 22, 2011 @ 4:28 pm
Hopefully the rest will fit in:-
Something as simple as a Friend Request is now just a headache of options. The chat, instead of just showing everybody that's online now is broken up into segments that YOU GUESS I want to talk to, more often than not displaying many that I rarely want to chat with and many that aren't even online. Do I have the option to just display everyone that IS online? Nope, because as history has taught us Facebook isn't about viewing or doing things that I want, it's about Facebook coming up with some ludicrous idea of how things "should" be and than ramming it down it's users throats. I echo the sentiments of others that have cited that it is this kind of mentality that killed MySpace, a reminder that Facebook should never consider themselves "too big to fail." You're not!
Comment by Maggie — September 22, 2011 @ 4:29 pm
I agree with you 100%. I liked the old format much better.
Comment by Crystal — September 22, 2011 @ 4:30 pm
I'd also like to say that before FB introduces new changes it really should clean up its act and act upon complaints regarding offensive sites much quicker than they do. Hundreds have complained – over the past 6 weeks – about a certain site and yet it still remains. Am beginning to think FB is not all it's cracked up to be and – like many others – will probably end up closing my page down
(
Comment by Maggie — September 22, 2011 @ 4:53 pm
I don't like the fact that I see my friends posts on other peoples walls in the ticker. I don't want to see it, and I could give a rats fat behind what they continue to post. It's annoying to me that I get 100 notifications every time someone so much as farts in the general direction of their open facebook page. The changes do not make my life any easier on Facebook, I want to know what everyone is up to, but in my own time! NOT YOURS!
I should be able to decide when I read something and have the ability to access it with EASE! Facebook should be user friendly and it was…..but now it's just a different story.
As much as you WANT to be the best……FACEBOOK ALREADY WAS! without these changes but you just had to go bigger and bigger. The people were asking for simple things – A dislike button, better info control and friend list manipulation, what you gave us all is one big bloody headache to try and get around. It was a great tool for communication, keeping in touch and doing the things I enjoyed and now I've lost it…..and soon you will lose me. I've already got my google+ profile up and I'm just waiting to see what happens over the next week. If Facebook is no longer user friendly, I'm leaving.
Comment by Jos — September 22, 2011 @ 5:14 pm
The Improvements to FB are GREAT! I want my social networking experience to be more high tech than the old fashioned beta-like version. Good Job!
Comment by Apryl Dionne — September 22, 2011 @ 5:42 pm
Did you even consider that a lot of people that use Facebook are older and not as good with all this technical stuff. You are leaving us out in the cold with all these changes. Even my young friends hate the changes you have made.
Comment by Pat — September 22, 2011 @ 5:55 pm
I do not like the new format,you should leave it up to each person to change theres if they want and let the other people leave there page the way it was. we should all have our own choice.
Comment by Diane — September 22, 2011 @ 6:05 pm
Facebook is assuming that the average user wants to spend an inordinate amount of time "managing" their public profile online (even if public means just visible to "friends"). So many options, so many decisions to make about what info gets displayed how and where and to whom… Many of my connections work in the media space and are happy to spend their time doing this kind of stuff (though even there, people are grumbling about social media burnout). But the average user? Not so much. And my aunt, who I still hadn't convinced to open a Facebook account because she's 'too busy" and doesn't want to share her email address with Mark Z? Forget it.
Comment by Tonia Ries — September 22, 2011 @ 6:21 pm
Tiem to look for a enw way to talk to my friends, hate this new changes made..too damn hard to find things. Let us choose new or old but if we are faced with the new, Change is for me to find another site to communicate with my friends. HATE, HATE, HATE what facebook has done einds
Comment by Vida — September 22, 2011 @ 6:58 pm
Er guys, FB ain't ours, its theirs. Agreed it is crap but it is their business not ours. No choice!
Comment by mark — September 22, 2011 @ 7:21 pm
Facebook changes, like it or hate it? http://bit.ly/oAr0mo
Comment by amitroushan — September 22, 2011 @ 7:46 pm
[...] Next comes a live performance by Crystal Castles, the official after party taking place in the same venue where f8 took place. [...]
Pingback by UPDATED: Zynga Shows Off Its New Digs Ahead Of Facebook F8 Party — September 22, 2011 @ 7:59 pm
You are about to learn something about a successful business. You remain successful by listening to customers. The opposite is true. I am amazed how unpopular these changes are. Facebook succeeds because of its simplicity and appearance. These guys are either creating a diamond or driving the car off the cliff. When a novice business (Facebook, Programmers yes, Business Novice) owner is confronted with competition, they start changing all of the things that made them successful. Dave Thomas, by this time a veteran of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a millionaire. He had a google + type competitor. A restraunt owner watching everything his staff did. The staff told Dave about it. Dave said. "If he is watching our business, who is watching his?" The message is focus on your business at hand. Sadly Facebook is impressed as they have always been since it's founding with programming and programmers. They need to focus on the business of not serving hot dogs when people came into their Wendy's hamburger joint. Again. When confronted with competition. Focus on what makes your business special and successful.
Comment by Robert Crabtree — September 22, 2011 @ 10:30 pm
your changes stink that ticker thing is annoying i used to go to the game stories under the collect gifts box to do returns now its not there and i cant get all the posts from other people to get my quests finished because you chose to tell me what i can and cannot see put it back thhe way it was before you started deciding what is best for all of us basically it wasnt broken and DID NOT need fixed
Comment by Billy Davis — September 22, 2011 @ 10:49 pm
you mean they can decide what my opinion is
Comment by Billy Davis — September 22, 2011 @ 10:49 pm
The new Facebook,it's like they hired a chemist to make a cup of coffee!!
Comment by Mister Common Sense — September 23, 2011 @ 1:59 am
You know, you made an interesting point.
What's wrong with having a Ticker that stays hidden until the user decides to summon it?
Comment by Outre Fulsome — September 23, 2011 @ 2:38 am
Does this person work for facebook? This reads like an ad, not like something a real person would say.
Comment by Guest — September 23, 2011 @ 2:40 am
That's only because you haven't lived long enough.
Wait ten years. Wait until you've had it with myriad other people deciding "for" you what you want and where you will be doing things.
Then, and only then, will you "get" what has everyone's dander up.
This isn't hihg-tech. High-tech would be completely user driven interface with the user deciding when and how he/she would interact with the data.
This is so 1970s with the corporations and advertisers attempting to "direct" the user to what they want them to be doing, ultimately reaching for their wallet for some "product" or "service" they've been "driven" to.
No, it's not "new" it's very, very old … hat.
Comment by Outre Fulsome — September 23, 2011 @ 2:42 am
[...] only two demographics for which Facebook’s extensive changes scored victories were those who selected IT as their career, with 57 percent of the 14 respondents [...]
Pingback by INFOGRAPHIC: Who Are Facebook’s Biggest Haters? — September 23, 2011 @ 1:48 pm
You're probably said something similar when Facebook launched Newsfeed.
Comment by Farrred — September 23, 2011 @ 4:13 pm
jumped the shark
Comment by ahoving — September 23, 2011 @ 5:16 pm
I think I may close this account and go back to the old ways of staying in contact. This is not relaxing at all. Why would I get on here after a long work day just to be more stressed out because I can not find anything that "I" want to look at easily anymore. Oh well Life will go on without facebook:)
Comment by Chris — September 23, 2011 @ 5:31 pm
agreed!
Comment by chris — September 23, 2011 @ 5:32 pm
GOOGLE+… Thanks I may have to go check that one out.
Comment by chris — September 23, 2011 @ 5:43 pm
Unfortunately I may have to close my account and check out a few other places too. I go to facebook to relax after a long day, NOT to be more stressed out by all of the changes. I can not find anything now without a hassle. Sorry FB, You are less user friendly everyday.
Comment by Chris — September 23, 2011 @ 5:50 pm
Facebook once was a great place to use. But just as when Myspace new owners changed it, it lost appeal and people came to Facebook. Now people see the same mistakes here and seek a better place to use. You can not force what you think best over listening to what people actually like and want. Facebook sucks now! It is about programmers ideas and not about what people really like and want. My feelings.
Comment by Art Liles — September 23, 2011 @ 11:29 pm
THIS TIMELINE AND STUFF SUCKS ZUCK!!
I refuse to do anything more on this site
Comment by Penny — September 24, 2011 @ 12:43 am
I just want my "game play" back….where the hell did my feed for the games go and how do I get it back?This new set up SUCKS!
Comment by Marjorie Richardson — September 24, 2011 @ 9:24 am
[...] extensive changes introduced by Facebook last week will have varying effects on just about every company that uses the social network for marketing [...]
Pingback by Q&A: Appitalism’s Simon Buckingham On New Facebook — September 26, 2011 @ 11:44 am
[...] of the extensive changes Facebook made to its platform last week traveled quickly, to say the least, but how did the developments at f8 [...]
Pingback by Q&A: Gogobot’s Travis Katz On New Facebook Journey — September 26, 2011 @ 2:12 pm
[...] Have you found yourselves dealing with any extra posts on your walls or news feeds since Facebook introduced several changes last week ? addthis_pub = 'biznickman'; Tags:f8, Music Dashboard, Spotify .intro{ [...]
Pingback by Stop Spamming Your Facebook Friends From Spotify — September 26, 2011 @ 4:56 pm
I love these new changes. I think it's great that Facebook is always looking for new ways to stay fresh. Also, Mark's ultimate goal is to make Facebook everyone's home on the Internet and allow the site to be the ultimate tool for sharing anything going on in its users' lives.
Whether you guys like the new changes or not does not matter. Facebook has over 700 million users; I'm pretty sure it won't matter if a couple hundred of them leave. You guys will look for other way to connect with your friends; the rest of us will continue our time with Facebook, sharing life in new ways that has never been known to man.
Comment by Tom Hooper — September 27, 2011 @ 10:39 pm
[...] now, only timeline users can see other [...]
Pingback by 7 Things I Want To See In Facebook’s Timeline — September 28, 2011 @ 7:31 pm
[...] asked about the impact of the changes Facebook began implementing in recent weeks, Fong mentioned that Facebook investor Benchmark Capital is also an investor in [...]
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Like it or not, the Timeline is coming and there is no escape! It's better to be prepared.
I wrote a 7 very easy steps guide on "How to get your shiny new Facebook Timeline now".
Find it here: http://www.vectorash.ro/enable-facebook-timeline/
Comment by vectorash — October 11, 2011 @ 10:06 pm
[...] the changes Facebook began introducing at its f8 developers’ conference last month, Lepe highlighted the social network’s [...]
Pingback by Ooyala Digs Deeper Into Facebook Video Analytics — October 13, 2011 @ 10:11 am
[...] May 23, 2008, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted it Sept. 15, 2009. Facebook announced its timeline profile this past September 22, at its f8 developers [...]
Pingback by Timelines.com Explains Patent Suit Against Facebook — October 19, 2011 @ 12:39 pm
[...] new timeline profile was announced with great fanfare over a month ago, and two different start dates for a beta [...]
Pingback by VOTE: Will We Ever See Facebook’s Timeline? — October 27, 2011 @ 3:47 pm
[...] Zuckerberg prior to the Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer’s keynote speech at the f8 developers conference last month, he introduced several new fake features, including the “Slow Poke.” That one [...]
Pingback by Comedy Becomes Reality With Facebook Slow-Poke — October 28, 2011 @ 2:04 pm
[...] of the biggest issues Facebook users raised about the changes to the news feed introduced six weeks ago was the most recent stories not appearing at the top. Now, the social [...]
Pingback by Facebook Restores News Feed To Previous Design — November 9, 2011 @ 6:08 pm
[...] really no such thing as spending too much time preparing your timeline for public viewing. The longer you’ve had your Facebook account and the more active [...]
Pingback by How To Play Your Music On Facebook’s Timeline — December 16, 2011 @ 1:08 pm
Man! I dont like TIMELINE! i wanna go back to old ONE WAY BC I LIKED IT!
Comment by Crystal — December 17, 2011 @ 4:53 pm
I refuse to accept this ''TIMELINE'', my internet speed isn't that fast and it's all so ''laggy'', i can barely scroll with mouse up and down on my friends profiles, it's all too detailed also, when i click on some some pics i wait like 20,30 sec to open them, i just wish facebook was the one like thar from 2008 for example, that was the best time i had on that site!!
Comment by Nikola95 — December 19, 2011 @ 8:57 am
is timeline optional?
Comment by joanna — December 20, 2011 @ 10:10 am
How can I delete Timeline from my Facebook page and go back to normal viewing?
Comment by mikette — December 26, 2011 @ 1:04 am
That's not possible. It's Timeline or nothing, but be careful. There are many scammers out there using the fact that many Facebook users don't like the new changes to their benefit. They have products out there claiming that they can take you back to the old way. These are all scams. Don't fall for them.
Comment by Deanne Lancaster — January 5, 2012 @ 5:43 pm
All I want to know is how to get my ticker back! It disappeared over a month ago. I cannot get anyone to help me fix the problem. That is my only complaint.
Comment by BETH — January 8, 2012 @ 1:14 am
I can't find any of my game postings AND NEITHER CAN MY FRIENDS TO HELP ME. This "timeline" sucks for gamers!! Can't you provide an option to anchor on left or right top side of users profile a game posting feed WHICH INCLUDES ALL USERS GAME POSTING for ALL games that user plays??? Posts in that option box can disappear from the box after 24 hours, since most posts after that time frame become inactive anyway. I DOUBT YOU ARE EVEN LISTENING TO YOUR USERS, SO I'M PROBABLY WASTING MY TIME WITH THE SUGGESTION. HATE, HATE, HATE TIMELINE!
Comment by Kimberly — January 11, 2012 @ 11:40 pm
i like timeline its awesome..
Comment by 3S shoppe — January 23, 2012 @ 10:21 pm
I wish you could make it user friendly. You have good and bad. I have not found how I am going to see post, notifications, ticker…. I feel if I am having trouble – what about someone like my husband. He will never see anything or know what is going on.
I wish it was fun again.
Comment by Carol S — January 30, 2012 @ 11:58 am
[...] of 2.1 percent, which Howell believes is a strong indicator that publishers have adopted to the changes Facebook introduced in [...]
Pingback by Facebook’s F8 Changes Boost Traffic To Media Sites — January 31, 2012 @ 8:56 pm
well i would like to see you make a website better than facebook
Comment by Vivian — February 16, 2012 @ 11:28 pm