Facebook kicked off February with a bang. In addition to announcing a new open source project and other items, Facebook celebrated its birthday in style with the launch of a new homepage and announced further product releases in the near future. With rumors of a new email product from Facebook, excitement around future Facebook product releases is growing.
Facebook’s New Homepage Goes Live
At least 80 million users are now viewing Facebook’s new homepage. While there continues to be some existing bugs for Facebook to resolve (including the dashboard privacy flaw that we’ve covered extensively), much of the feedback we’ve heard so far has been mostly positive. Over the next week or so, most of the remaining 320 million Facebook users will have the homepage rolled out to them as well.
Facebook Launches HipHop For PHP
After rumors about a new Facebook PHP product were spread, Facebook formerly announced HipHop for PHP. The product is a “source code transformer” which effectively converts PHP to C++ and then uses g++ to compile the code. Understanding what’s taking place under the hood isn’t what’s important though. The most important thing to realize is that it means Facebook is now much more efficient and should be quicker.
Facebook Makes Printer Friendly Of Ads Receipt
Last week Facebook also announced a printer friendly version of ads receipts. While most users may not care about this feature, active advertisers will find the new printer friendly transaction summaries to be useful. As Facebook states, “This view of your transactions is designed to be more convenient for accounting and tax purposes.”
Celebrity Doppleganger Week Becomes A Hit, Followed By Urban Dictionary Names
Celebrity Doppelganger’s were all the rage over the past week on Facebook. With a large number of Facebook users changing their profile photos to images of their celebrity look-a-likes, Facebook users appeared to start a new trend: weekly viral games. As such, users attempted to spark a new trend last week: Facebook Urban Dictionary week. While not everybody participated in the game, a large number of people flocked to the Urban Dictionary website to find out what their name meant.
Facebook Announces New Ad Terms
Last week many ad networks and developers learned of new Facebook advertising terms aimed at making the Facebook Platform a safer environment for users. In an attempt to avoid future “ScamVille” problems, Facebook is now forcing ad networks to be more transparent about their activities. Some developers and ad networks were concerned about one of the new term statements:
The ad provider also agrees to share with Facebook the contact information, implementation specifics and payment details, for each developer or application on Facebook for which the ad provider provides services.
Facebook then clarified for us that such information “will only be requested if there is a very clear need to do so.”
Debate Over Facebook As The Largest News Reader Rages On
Is Facebook the largest news reader? New data released by Hitwise illustrated how Facebook is increasingly becoming the source of news for many users. While some continue to debate Facebook’s future as a news reader, we argues that Facebook has already become the largest global source of news. If you want a thorough explanation of our rationale, read this article.
Zynga’s FarmVille Launches On MSN Games
Zynga made a major announcement last week regarding their extremely popular FarmVille game. The company will now have the game on MSN Games and Microsoft Live Messenger. It’s a huge milestone for Zynga, who has become one of the largest online game developers.
Microsoft And Facebook Prepare An Improved Search
At the end of the week Microsoft announced that they are working with Facebook to release a new version of search which includes more information, including integration with users’ social graphs. While complete details were not provided, it sounds like the new search will be rolled out once the new homepage has been completely launched and tested with users.
Facebook seems to be proud of their changes, while leaving most of their users in big anger and dispair. Newsfeed is gone baloney, jumps from december to 1 minute ago, doesn´t show other ones, making it impossible to help with Mafia Wars or Farmville. Please reconsider your changes, of if you want to change, do it prOfessionally. At the moment it´s just not working!!!
Comment by arnild weiss — February 7, 2010 @ 11:06 am
AGREED! People are TICKED! and don't understand why some people have it (we keep telling them they don't want it) and why some don't. It's terrible and they should back it out.
Comment by me — February 7, 2010 @ 11:26 am
That is true. The news feed has gone crazy and it shows completely different feed everytime you reload the homepage. Also, friends, who have been blocked show up in news feed. The chat window doesn´t seem to be working either…as it shows 0 friends online, while there are at least 10 online, sometimes it doesn´t load at all… Is Facebook going to fix this? Or will they keep pretending there is nothing wrong?
Comment by Jamie — February 7, 2010 @ 11:54 am
i like!
i love !
Comment by alice kuo — February 7, 2010 @ 1:39 pm
I'm very surprised to read that the majority of the feedback you received was positive. The overwhelming posts that I've read about the recent FB changes have been negative. Especially about the news feed which as been the number one complaint.
Then again Facebook's motto should be: If it isn't broke, fix it until it is.
Comment by Diane — February 7, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
I loathed it… I left it…
Yep, my homepage changed last Friday, I was one of the early ones.
Constant scrolling up to see if there were notifications. Chat in two places?
Cluttered menus and not all bookmarks now showing but hidden in menus.
The quicklaunch bookmark toolbar has gone so now, whether in a profile or an application, one has to constantly return to the Home page to access another application.
News feeds are delivered on some unknown algorithm the Facebook program uses to send each member the news Facebook believes that person should have, whether or not they want it. So people are getting news feeds from friends of stuff they don't want.
So reduced was my enjoyment of Facebook that I gave up and deactivated my account.
Comment by Departed — February 7, 2010 @ 5:06 pm
Dear “departed”
I feel your pain! I’m one of the victims of the new Home UI blunders and I don’t blame you for abandoning FB. They have removed the ONE option that made Facebook tolerable for me–the ability to have one of my Friend lists as my default Home page stream of updates. Now, the default is the “Top News” (just a renaming of “News Feed”) and you can only (temporarily?) change it to “Most Recent” (aka the former “Live Feed”). I have to click on Friends, then wait, then click on my specific list (and wait again) in order to see what was *formerly* my default Home feed…and it won’t “stick” (no option to save it).
BOO Facebook! Thousands and thousands of negative comments are building up on the FB blog announcement (here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=287459122130) and on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s page. Users are NOT happy!
Comment by DTinAZ — February 8, 2010 @ 11:57 am
Really do not like the new layout. And news feed has gone crazy showing completely different feeds/updates everytime you reload the homepage?! Plus friends, who have been blocked are now showing up once more?! What are you doing to FB?!
Comment by MsFitz — February 8, 2010 @ 5:47 pm
Well this new homepage on facebook is the biggest piece of crap I’ve ever seen, and if it doesn’t change back, I will delete my facebook account, no lie.
Comment by amdssd — February 8, 2010 @ 9:14 pm
New home page last friday morning…I too am surprised that they say feedback has been positive. I personally hate it and all that have been “updated” since have expressed the dislike.
No more is there an application at the bottom of the page so you have to go to your home page everytime you want to switch to another app in FB. The status feeds are all goofy, yesterday, a minute ago, 2 hours ago…no order..no sense. I would like to go status only and occassionally all feed but its just a clusterf%^* that is making me ill.
I was really enjoying facebook and now with some game updates and the main page up date I’m ready to just give it all up.
It’s not fun – just aggravating! FB should be fun!!
Comment by lori — February 8, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
This new design isn't meant to be easier for the User….it was redesigned because of a 25% drop in application use/widgets and 'causes'….FB gets it's money from advertisements. So the truth isn't that they wanted you to have an easier time with FB. They did it to make applications/causes/sponsors links more accessible so they can make more money.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=facebook+drop+in...
Comment by jayman — February 9, 2010 @ 6:33 am
Like the others, I have no idea where you're (they're) getting positive feedback. If they want to change some design or whatever, fine. I'm not crazy about it since they do it as soon as I get used to the old. But the issues with not being able to see everyone's updates are the biggest problem I have. I'm being totally redundant because I've already seen so many people saying this, but I update my status and it doesn't show up on the live feed. I see about 5-10 of my friends' statuses (I have over 300 friends). I want to see ALL of their updates, not just the ones facebook wants me to see. This is the first time I've seriously considered deactivating my account. I just don't know what else to use. It's the only social network I've ever used. Anyone have any ideas??
Comment by Amy — February 9, 2010 @ 10:55 am
Please count me in among those who are about to count themselves out unless the News Feed is fixed. If FB's purpose is to increase the exposure of its ads, I'm pretty sure that screwing up the News Feed this badly is counter-productive to that goal. If we all decamp, who'll read the newly highlighted ads?
Comment by RNinTO — February 9, 2010 @ 4:03 pm
I haven't even been able to connect for 2 days now. My account is "temporarily unavailable" and "please try again in a few hours". I don't care how many changes are made; I would just like them to work so I can have access.
Comment by June — February 10, 2010 @ 3:28 am
This so-called upgrade is a train wreck that hasn't stopped moving just yet.
I do believe they did it solely for ads and revenue, because prior to the upgrade, I saw none of the ads thanks to Adblock Plus. Now, I see them, even with ABP enabled. That's called progress, right? Wonder if all the Ad Muncher users are seeing them as well…
They certainly didn't make the changes for usability…I can't select what list shows up on my feed when I login, I can't reorganize the apps in the order I want them, and I have to go back to the home page every single time I want to switch apps.
I love how they said they tested several designs. Really? Who with, a bunch of lobotomized and blind prairie dogs?
Comment by Dana — February 14, 2010 @ 11:17 am
Yes….alot of people dislike the changes. Meh.
Does anyone know a list of "weeks" on fb? Like this week is Disney Character Week, and the one before this was DoppleGanger week? Anyone have a list of "weeks"s? Or "themes" perhaps. A calendar? idk, someone send me a list. Search Hannah Welch on fb, and I'm Mufasa (the pic, LOL) and mail me if you have a list. Thanks
Comment by Hannah — April 2, 2010 @ 8:51 am