863area.com

A small review on Facebook’s f8 conv. & what’s in store:

Facebook held their annual f8 convention last night. Click that link and you will see many of the changes coming. This latest batch that many are confused about (new wall, top stories, ticker, smart groups, etc) are very small changes to what is actually coming. The way they are going to interconnect things is amazing, but at the same time may somewhat threaten a lot of privacy of the members.

It starts with TIMELINE: Everything you post has already been catalog’d via your wall, since you joined facebook. You wall is now going to become a TIMELINE, a sharp looking profile page catalog’d by year and all your activity. Facebook algorithms are going to select the top stories from your wall and place them in your timeline as the highlighted posts….so not every post will show, but are accessible if you wanted to swap out the ones facebook puts up, in place of them. It’s innovative, but may show more than what you want it to to people you don’t really know but have added to your friends list. In timeline, you can go back to a date and add photos, events, and other things… to show a “timeline” of your life. It’s cool, but it does show a lot more than you probably want to show to a friend or acquaintance you just met.

To battle this, facebook has launched the Smart Groups. Smart groups allow you to share specific info with only certain circles of people. (kind of like google+). Now you can group people and select which posts go to what groups of people. This works NOW on all posts you post, plus you can go back through your timeline and change who see’s what.
In addition to the timeline, facebook is adding verbs to the mix. Something like Tj is LISTENING to Bop Skizzum. TJ READ the magazine article in maxim. This is in addition to “likes” this.

Next is the Ticker. The ticker is that annoying thing on the right that keeps scrolling and showing everything everyone is doing. Ticker will go through some changes (thankfully) but will be a live wall of what your friends are doing at that moment. Unfortunately it will show when friends commented, what they commented, and stuff like that. If they are listening to a song, you can jump in and listen with them. If they are watching a movie, you can watch with them, etc. This is all thanks to company’s like Spotify & Netflix who are launching Social Apps here on Facebook. To me, that may be a little too much…but it is coming, so we better just embrace the changes.

There are a few other changes, but they are best described in the 45 minute presentation here: https://www.facebook.com/f8?sk=app_283743208319386

Hope this can help…. I know that some will not like these changes and will leave in search of a better social network, but let’s face it…. The goal of being interconnected to everyone you meet and want to share your life is all right here. So, go back through that friends list and group your friends into smart groups and then delete those you don’t want to follow you. If you have an acquaintances you don’t want to me rude to… just tell them you only use your facebook to stay connected to family and close personal friends from high school, and/or start a fan page lol.

Take care,
TJ Alcock

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *