Facebook changes: Timeline, Social News, Music, Movies, and new verbs
Facebook announced major changes to its service, including a striking feature called Timeline, which lets you "scrapbook" you digital life. The company also introduced deep, realtime integration with music and video apps such as Hulu, MOG, Rdio, and Netflix which let your friends see all of your content-consumption as it happens. Additionally, it's now possible for developers to come up with their own action words which can live next to the company's famous "Like" button, such as "Read," "Watch," or "Listen."
Web & Social
Facebook adds a few Timeline features to Groups
Facebook isn't being shy about rolling out its Timeline interface to as many of the corners of its site as it can. In addition to the rumored addition of the Timeline to Brand Pages, the social network is also adding Timeline features to Facebook Groups. The most obvious change is the new full-width top image, though if the administrator doesn't set a lead image it defaults to a collage of the profile images from group members. There are also clearer sections for group topics, links, members,...
Web & Social
The Daily Show, Huffington Post, and more join Facebook Open Graph
Facebook has today announced that thirteen new media partners have joined its Open Graph timeline apps program. The Daily Show, Huffington Post, MSNBC, and CBS Local (New York and Los Angeles) are some of the latest big-name partners to sign up. Open Graph apps are "social adverts" that automatically post a user's activity into a box on their profile page, and to a ticker on their friend's news feed. Some of the new apps allow you to view content directly on Facebook, whereas others connect...
Brand Pages on Facebook to get Timeline upgrade soon?
Brand pages for social networks seem to be the new hip way for companies to promote themselves on the web, but Facebook's Timeline upgrade for regular user profiles has left its Pages looking comparatively dull. It looks like the balance could be restored soon enough, though, with Timeline apparently set to roll out to brand-focused Pages in the near future. AdAge is reporting that the update will likely be unveiled on February 29th at fMC, Facebook's marketing-focused conference. At first it...
Web & Social
Facebook reportedly trying out Open Graph ads, turning 'watch,' 'listen,' and 'read' into additional cash
Last month Facebook tested a new type of advert called featured stories, which allowed companies to publish your likes in the form of ads on your news feed. Now TechCrunch reports that Facebook is running a pilot program to bring the same idea to users that have performed certain actions inside Facebook apps. "Open Graph" actions, as Facebook calls them, are an extension of the site's "like" paradigm, and can be any verb, such as "listen," "watch," or "read." Companies can now take a group of...
Facebook's new photo viewer inspired by Google+?
Facebook is testing a new photo-viewing interface with a small number of users, and it bears certain… similarities to a competitor's design. That competitor would be Google+, which uses a near-identical combination of black frame, large picture on the left, and comment stream on the right. See for yourself — above is the new Facebook interface, and below is a shot from Google+. Unoriginal it may be, but we think being able to view comments and the picture at the same time is a big...
Web & Social
Facebook Timeline rolling out to everyone in the 'next few weeks'
The preparation period is over and there's no going back. Facebook just announced Timeline will be a mandatory change for everyone in "the next few weeks." In a terse blog post update, Facebook says "everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now." In case you haven't been following Facebook's Timeline news, once it's activated, you have seven days to tweak your new profile, change settings, and adjust images before it's visible to other...
Web & Social
Facebook Open Graph launches with 60 new partners, brings new verbs to Timeline
Tonight Facebook is finally taking the wraps off of Open Graph, launching with 60 new partners ranging from smaller sites like Airbnb, Foodly, and Pinterest to big names like Ticketmaster and Rotten Tomatoes. Carl Sjogreen, Facebook's Director of Platform Product, debuted the new Open Graph partners and larger launch tonight, though it was initially shown off at last year's f8 conference. Oddly, Zuckerberg was nowhere in sight at this evening's brief launch.
The Open Graph initiative is a way...
Web & Social
How to use Facebook Timeline
Whether you're ready or not, Facebook has begun the Timeline rollout, and your lowly, simple profile page will soon be transformed into a glorious two-column scrapbook documenting every facet of your digital life. It's the most radical change in the history of the site, so unless you opt to shut down your account, we recommend going into this with the knowledge of what to expect and how to deal with it, whether or not you agree with Zuckerberg that a life-spanning scrapbook best represents...
Apps & Software
Facebook iOS update adds Timeline, friend lists, subscriptions, and more
Several days after initially appearing on Android and mobile, Facebook Timeline is now available for iOS via the 4.1 update. It also adds access to your Facebook Lists and subscriptions, neither of which were available in the major 4.0 update from earlier this fall. To see your Timeline after updating from the App Store, tap the navigation button in the top left and select your profile — you'll find your Lists accessible farther down the sidebar. Assuming you've enabled Timeline, it...
Facebook Timeline available on Android and mobile
Just a few hours after launching the new Timeline profile design globally, Facebook is debuting the new feature on Android and m.facebook.com. The smaller screen keeps the mobile timeline constrained to a single column instead of the web version's dual column setup, but you'll find a lot that's similar here. Now, when clicking through to a friend, you can scroll through their history (or your own) by days, weeks, months, and years. Images feature much more prominently in the new Android...
Facebook Timeline rolls out worldwide
The big change to the way Facebook presents its user profiles and data is rolling out globally today. Timeline, the name and central theme of the visual overhaul, launched in New Zealand first about a week ago, and now Facebook's delivering it to the rest of the world as well. Cognizant of the potential for user revolt, Facebook is also giving everyone a seven-day review period, wherein you'll get to see exactly how your Timeline looks and what information it includes before any of your...
Facebook's Timeline rollout begins today
While we're sure more than a few of you have already got the Timeline through posing as a developer, for everyone else the rollout begins today. The Timeline is Facebook's "new way of expressing who you are," which blurs the current dividing lines in your profile and mixes the content from your information section (including your Likes and music taste) with the links and statuses posted onto your wall. It also makes older stories far more accessible, meaning that people can skip back a...
Standing on the shoulder of giants: Mog sees exponential growth thanks to Facebook link-up
Facebook's redesign at the end of September was accompanied by a major, and not universally loved, change: sharing of things you listen to with Facebook-connected apps now happens automatically instead of only when you choose it. The negative user feedback has led Spotify to offer a private listening option, but overall, the impact for the music services that chose to sign on with Facebook has been phenomenally positive. Mog, a US-only free music subscription service, has been among those...
Web & Social
Editorial: Facebook’s new sharing is anything but ‘frictionless’
Just a few days ago, Facebook announced a number of significant changes, the most important of which is the morphing of personal profiles into "timelines," where each update, tagging, event, and photo is now a "story" of one’s life. The social network will now serve for each person who uses it as a chronological catalogue of events on a line, leading inevitably to death. This is the feature which has gotten the most attention, and I have much to say about it — such as the fact that I find...
Web & Social
Facebook launches Social News apps, partners with a variety of media companies
Along with the movies and music integration, Facebook's also adding some unique social reading capabilities to the platform with what it's calling Social News apps. Mark Zuckerberg didn't explain the new integration as completely as the multimedia offerings, but he did detail that lots of news publications - including The Washington Post, The Daily, Yahoo News, and Slate - will be rolling out Facebook apps, or what seem to be reformatted versions of content for the social network. The idea is...
Web & Social
Facebook Music announced with Spotify, Rdio, MOG, and more
Just as we heard last night, Facebook has just announced its Music service where it is teaming up with MOG, Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, and many other partners.
Obviously, this is a big social push for Facebook and its partners. Once you authorize the appropriate music service, you’ll be able to click a friend’s song activity in the Facebook ticker, which then takes you to the song in that app or website. So, for example, if you click on a friend’s Spotify activity, that song will load...
Web & Social
Facebook's music service to have 'listen with friends' feature, integrated into Ticker
It seems Facebook's long-rumored music offering is a lock for tomorrow's f8 developer conference — or at least, that's the impression we're getting from an over-anxious employee who slipped a few details a little early. The company's creative director Ji Lee mentioned a "listen with your friend" feature that was "blowing [his] mind" on Twitter earlier this evening. The tweet, which has since been deleted, also mentions integration with Facebook's Ticker — the new live feed that remains...
