Last week was another busy week for Facebook. Of most significance was that Facebook rolled out a new homepage toward the end of the week. As I wrote over the weekend, the response has been mixed as users adjust to the automatically filtered News Feed. There are also a number of other stories this week related to Bing, Farmville, an upgraded giftshop and more.
Bing Announces Facebook Status Integration
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, Microsoft announced that they would begin integrating Twitter and Facebook statuses into their search. While Twitter support launched immediately, Facebook status integration is a couple months behind. While there was no financial incentive for Facebook to open up access to their status updates, Microsoft and Facebook already have a long standing relationship for search.
Google and Twitter are also working together on a service to integrate Twitter results into their search service, however its not live yet. While Facebook was rumored to be working with Google on something, no official announcement was made.
Facebook Launches New Ad Manager
Toward the beginning of the week, Facebook announced that they would be launching an upgraded version of their ad manager. The new ad manager includes the ability to search campaigns, edit campaigns and ads on the fly, the ability to edit ad creatives, and more. The new ad manager began rolling out at the beginning of the week and should be accessible to everybody soon.
Facebook Starts Rolling Out New Gift Shop
Over the past couple months we’ve been covering the integration of applications into the Facebook gift shop. As of last week that news became official with the new gift shop being gradually rolled out over the coming weeks. Also included in the news was that Lala would be providing MP3 gifts for users that they could send to their friends. The music could be downloaded by the gift recipient and friends can each listen to the track once after which they will be able to be able to play 30 second samples.
Farmville Surpasses 60 Million Monthly Users
Farmville, the largest Facebook application ever, continues breaking new records as it surpassed 60 million monthly active users for the first time. At the time, I suggested that Zynga could eventually come close to matching Facebook’s own revenue. While Zynga is rumored to be halfway to Facebook’s 500+ million in revenue this year, it will be a while before Zynga matches Facebook’s revenue. That’s not to say it isn’t possible though and with continued growth, Zynga has become the crown jewel of the Facebook platform.
Facebook Rolls Out A New Homepage
The most significant story of last week was that Facebook rolled out a new homepage for all users. The highlights have now been moved to the main News Feed and stories previously removed from the highlights have returned to the feed. The reviews have been mixed as many users are still not used to the new design. It’s common that a segment of the user base gets annoyed with large changes by Facebook.
The new homepage design has made it much more difficult for application developers to expand their reach since users now need to click on “Live Stream” to view the unfiltered feed. We’ll be keeping an eye on metrics across the platform to see what the complete impact has been.
Your explanation above of the changes is unintelligible. Where’s the missing manual? Are you sure that the users are irritated about change itself … or is it about the lack of explanation of the changes and how to use them. It’s as if you changed what side of the road you drive on overnight and find drivers “irritated” the next day.
Comment by mary mulvihill — October 26, 2009 @ 11:29 am
I don’t mind change – but this is confusing and also unclear why it is needed. for example, how do we adjust what is filtered into news feed which is the default? – my news feed is so boring it is worthless and you are not making it clear what can be done.
Comment by Fiona — October 26, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
I’d say the response to the Home Page change is not at all mixed, but decidedly AGAINST the change. I think it’s for 3 reasons.
1. No one knew it was coming.
2. No one was told it had happened and how to use what they now had.
3. It violates the first principle of interface design – don’t make viewers work harder to get what they want. In this case they’ve taken away a single view of all my FB info and forced me to check 2 things. This is incredibly incompetent.
4. One more… there is no choice available to the user to go back.
Comment by Ernie — October 26, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
It is a horrid change. If the idea was to push me off FB and towards Twitter – they won. I’ll check into FB occasionally, but not with the frequency or duration that I did before. Later folks.
Comment by Forrest Sweasy — October 26, 2009 @ 7:54 pm
I and others are finding the media isn’t highlighting the major bugs of the latest Facebook tweak from 10/23/09. The following:
1) not allowing people world wide to log on from three days to two weeks due to site mainteance messages
a. receive site maintenance message, which is the most frequent message**; or,
b. receive message that my password is incorrect, when actually it is correct;
2) showing lost friends when you’re able to log on for a few minutes; and/ or,
3) restricting access inbox of Facebook (FB) proprietary email platform and giving email errors messages–again for the few minutes FB allows user to stay on.
I discovered today on Twitter that many are very angry and frustrated (doing a keyword search of “Facebook” and “Maintenance”). Since numerous politicians, judicial candidates and businesses have Facebook pages, it makes me wonder why the news media don’t capture this pitfall of FB and the bugs correlated with major updates. Instead, when googling, I see news of how FB aiming to compete more with twitter, google, etc. by changing the layout and basic applications. Facebook says site maintenance takes a few hours, but many people are tweeting its untrue. FB asks the user to contact them if the problem persists more than 24 hours, but we still hear and see nothing fixed after 48-plus hours.
I am an ardent FB user and do some business on it. I told a judicial candidate yesterday I’d contact her to help plan and help out. Unfortunately, I can’t even log on to contact her. Since 10/23/09, I have been having trouble accessing my account and have sent numerous messages. Even if I wasn’t helping on political issues, the fact that many emails are on facebook that I cannot link to my Yahoo etc., makes me feel helpless. Why make Facebook email platform proprietary, thus conveying confidence, if we cannot access emails? Facebook does not allow to link emails to Outlook. This is another story angle that we see news media not highlight enough.
I have sent screenshots as requested and have cleared my cache to no avail. There is no way to contact a live person if a problem persists for more than 48 hours. Moreover, as I’ve observed on Twitscoop buzz function, an increasing number of people are being affected after the new layout was implemented this past weekend. I for one have found Facebook invaluable and if they were to institute a structure to pay for customer service year round, I would be happy to pay $12 a year (as Yahoo premium) to for direct phone/live online customer service and fix bugs within 24 hours. Im sure they’d find others who are willing. There is another angle to a news story there.
An increasing number of people worlwide are unable to access their accounts starting as early as two weeks ago (unsure if preparations for new platform correlates to this timeframe). I thought if I started contacting journalist friends and their contacts, as well as cold contacts, the proper news attention may be able to help me and others. I am available for interview, and I am following people on twitter and asking them if they would be interested for interviews as well, even though some are overseas (e.g., England).
Comment by Geri — October 26, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
Useless
Comment by Deb — October 26, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
I concur with the symptoms Geri has experienced. I have experienced the same problems and it all began last week as the new platform was launching. I get no feedback from Facebook when I send them information (several different times now).
I don’t mind the new stuff I just want to be able to access all my stuff in the manner to which I was accustomed.
Comment by Amy Ward — October 27, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Do you FB people ever read the group comments? You have millions who HATE this absurd, worthless, idiotic, moronic change. Then you tout it like it's so great. You didn't tell the members a gd thing about it. No one, but no one, likes this whatsoever. I hate Twitter, you Twits! If you're trying to emulate Twitter, count me totally out. In fact, I plan to contact each company whose ad appears on the now ridiculous news feed or status updates or wherever and let them know I'm boycotting their products. If members do this, enough, then your sponsors will flee as fast as they did from Glenn Beck. If that tells you anything.
Comment by EJ — October 28, 2009 @ 6:44 am
What, exactly, is gained by making it so people cannot get news from their fan pages without getting all the crap we managed to get rid of in the last redesign?
Comment by SD — November 18, 2009 @ 10:48 am