There's been a lot of furore over the recent Facebook homepage changes, when they changed from a newsfeed showing an algorithmically chosen selection of feed stories being generated from your friends, many of which were passive (reporting on activity they'd done around the site, but not necessarily actively chosen to share); to a 'live stream' of actively shared content, along with a highlights section, using algorithms as before to create a small selection of content (events, photo albums, applications) which are interesting to you because of the interest they're getting from your friends. They've also made the live stream easier to personalise using friend lists - this was possible before, but not as clear.
As when Facebook first introduced the newsfeed, a small minority of their users very vocally resisted the changes. Some of these are/were valid complaints; e.g. some people found too much application activity in the new stream, or if a user uploaded a number of photos consecutively (rather than all at once), this would create a long list of posts from just that user.
However, Facebook have recognised that as people on the web become more used to sharing, what becomes interesting is what people are actually choosing to share - not just a passive feed of their activities. This is the point behind Twitter, and has been found in application design; if a user clicks the share button and posts a link to their profile along with their own comment, it is far more viral than a passive newsfeed story. Facebook know this is the case - because they have the data on all their user behaviour. Facebook's own research has shown before that when users are exposed to more active types of sharing on the newsfeed (e.g. seeing uploaded, tagged, or commented photos) they are subsequently more likely to engage in the same, active behaviour. The same is now very likely to be true of status updates, and anecdotally this seems to be the case.
The truth is, with their masses of data, Facebook know very quickly whether a design change is good or bad. They've listened to feedback and are refining some of the aspects of design to reflect this (namely, more control over application stories, better highlights etc). However, if they're sticking with the design, it's because they know that users like it. Not because of a small minority making loud noises about how they don't like it; but because Facebook can see how people are actually using it.
Personally, I'd much rather have a stream of status updates and actively shared content from the people I want to hear about than a feed of passive activity that Facebook are struggling to make relevant from the huge mass of stories that were being generated every day.
3 comments:
There's no doubt that Twitter had a huge influence of the latest Facebook re-design; which is becoming a more contextual, less streamlined, Twitter stream!
Streams are definitely a more efficient way of managing huge quantities of real-time social information.
Will the improved efficiency will lead to people spending more or less time on Facebook? Probably more... ;-)
Thanks for the comment Alex. I have a feeling that it will lead to more engagement with the Facebook platform; however they've also opened up their status APIs, e.g. allowing status integration with Tweetdeck - so we could see more engagement with the Facebook feed off third party applications. This is a pretty clear indication from Facebook that they're not precious about retaining engagement on their core site - and a big signal about their monetisation strategy.
Remember Pownce? I used to describe it as "Facebook done right, but without any people".
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