via Tech Crunch

As you’ve probably already noticed, there have been lots of changes to Facebook recently.  In the past few days, they’ve given their site a facelift, including revamped friends Lists, a new real-time ticker, and the ‘subscribe’ button.  But that’s not it!  Just this afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced two major updates for Facebook at their annual developer conference, f8.

via Tech Crunch

The Timeline

  • The timeline is your profile re-invented.  As Zuckerberg said, the profile is “the heart of your Facebook experience.” The timeline seeks to completely re-define that experience.
  • The timeline focuses on your stories and your apps to create a new way to express who you are, illustrating the “story of your life” in a single page.
  • With the timeline, your profile becomes a summary of your life.  Complete with a new cover photo, apps and updates, your profile is transformed into a visual and social scrapbook of your life.
  • The timeline aims to make the past relevant by highlighting and curating your past events.

The Open Graph

  • Since Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected, they’ve introduced changes and a “new class of apps” to make content more deliverable, share-able, and social than ever before.
  • The open graph is all about expressing yourself in new ways.  Highlighting “frictionless experiences,” “realtime serendipity,” and “finding patterns,” Zuckerberg is ready to take Facebook beyond the “like.”  They’re adding verbs to connections, taking your experience from “liking” a “food” to “eating” a “meal.”
  • It will roll out more social apps focused on media and lifestyle (i.e. music, TV, food, and fashion) to help you connect with friends and discover new things.
  • This new flurry of activity will be controlled through a supplement to the news feed, the ticker, a stream that eliminates the noise of friends’ lightweight activity but still allows you to connect when appropriate.

In a nutshell, during his keynote Zuckerberg stressed the idea that Facebook wants to be the vehicle you use to share the story of your life.  They’re confidently taking Facebook and social networking to the next level.  From apps, graphs, and gaming, Facebook wants to become the place you share and archive everything you do.  While the last five years have been focused on getting people signed up and connected with others, the future of Facebook is focused on using apps to deepen engagement and enhance the user experience.

 

Following this keynote, I’m intrigued and amazed, but not without a few questions.

  1. What do these changes mean for marketers?
  2. What does the appearance of the Spotify and Netflix CEOs mean for Facebook?
  3. While the technology of these apps is amazing, will people want to share everything and anything they do?  Aren’t some things better left private?
  4. As Facebook Places proves, not everything Facebook does turns to gold.  Will these revolutionary changes stick?

Do you have any answers to these questions? Leave your comments in the section below!

 

-Erica Petersen, 451 Marketing, Internal Marketing Intern