Changing Faces-A take on the New Facebook

by - Abhishek Rao

Y

esterday, Facebook held its annual f8 Developer conference. Many digital & Social media experts had been waiting for the event since quite a while considering the fact that Facebook was going to announce some massive changes on its website.

From the last couple of weeks, there have been a couple of tweaks on Facebook which have received a mixed response from users.

Just three days back, significant changes were made to the profiles of users which added up to the curiosity of what was to come at f8.

Within hours of Facebook upgrading the profile page, users of the popular social network started to comment about the changes. It was an extremely negative response with users saying that the changes were unwanted and cumbersome.

The changes even went on to become a trending topic on rival social network Twitter, with users criticizing the changes on the hashtag #newfacebook

Yesterday, at f8, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about other changes that change the look and feel of Facebook completely.

Though the changes have not been put into effect for the moment, it should arrive on our Facebook profiles soon.

We at DigiMouth will give you a complete lowdown on the new changes on the popular social network.

#1Ticker:

The Ticker is a live feed placed on the right hand top corner of the screen. The Ticker flashes constant updates of friends on your profile so that you don't need to visit their profile pages to find out what they are doing.

From comments on photos, status updates and uploads, all activities carried out by users make their way on the Ticker. This application has very little use as majority of activities on Facebook by friends make it to your home page as news feeds anyway. The constant flashes can be distracting. Placing the Ticker box right on top of the Chat box makes the whole page look jumbled up and confusing.

#2 Top Stories:

By far, the most unwanted upgrade on Facebook, the Top Stories is a small check box which can be seen on the left hand top corner of the news feeds on your page. Using the Top Stories button, you can mark stories that are 'important' to you and Facebook will generate similar posts on your Wall in the future.

Just last week, they added the subscribe button which makes the use of the Top Stories tab utterly meaningless.

# 3 Larger Photos:

When I logged on to my profile page, it took me a second to realize that I was not on Google+. The photos that appear on your page have increased from being thumbnail images to large size images, just like Google's social network. The appearance of these photos would have looked really good if the homepage was not so cramped up with other feeds and upgrades.

#4 Timeline:

This new development was announced at the f8 Conference yesterday. This would probably be one of the most significant changes as it will completely change the look of your profile.

The timeline is like a virtual scrapbook of your life. Apart from recent developments, the upgrade allows you to browse through events of your life even before Facebook came out. Photos, locations and statuses can be segregated chronologically using the timeline.

This application will be very interesting to use by the look of it. It is not if this application will increase the time it takes for the page to load, but there has been a lot of buzz on the Internet about this application.

#5 Social Applications:

In order to make social networking more interactive and interesting, Facebook has added a couple of social applications on its network. These applications will let users share their activities with users on a more personal level.

Marketeers can tap on these social applications for promotions. For example, there is a Nike Running Application which lets users post about the amount of time and distance they sprinted.

Take a look at the various social applications you can use in the future on Facebook.

To put it in a nutshell, the changes are going to take engagement on Facebook to a completely new level. Though many of the changes are irritating, users will soon get used to them and probably even use them on a regular basis.

With the new changes, it will be interesting to see if the 750 million user base on Facebook will increase or diminish.