About two weeks ago, Facebook unveiled their new user interface to the world. Facebook enthusiasts have grown quite familiar of the sudden changes and revamps to the social media network. While some features are a nice change, others aren’t quite well received. Nevertheless, Facebook constantly pushes for change and innovation, instead of embracing a comfortable status quo.
Earlier today, Facebook unintentionally launched another update, which gave social media users a glimpse at what’s to come. The features of the update seem quite significant in comparison to the last update. Here are a few updates:
Pages
Remember when Facebook forced users to link everything listed in their profiles? That was a bit of a inconvenience. They haven’t toyed so much with the feature this time around, but have redesigned it. Tabs are now replaced by moving Pages to the left side of profiles. In addition, some Page admins noticed the ability to make comments on other Pages.
Memories
The designers at Facebook have caught onto the Facebook applications that allow users to see their entire year of status updates and comments, but have expanded on the concept. Reports mention the memories feature give users a “snapshot” of each year, with photos grouped by the year, updated statuses, and comments for a stroll down memory lane. For those with thousands of photos and hundreds of albums, it provides for some useful/great nostalgia. Perhaps the feature will rekindle old forgotten friendships and love or reignite passionate hate and jealously.
Outside World News Feed Filter
This provides users with news and real-time updates from outside sources. With so many users on Facebook already, this is a great feature to expose users to what they may ignore. It will be interesting to see how they integrate the types of news that are filtered through user profiles. It’s not quite clear what kind of outside “news” this will be, whether it be blog updates, tweets, or from news sources.
Photos Lightbox UI
This feature provides a slick photo album viewing interface, similar to what users of iTunes are familiar with when viewing album photos. A minor change, but a “cool” one nonetheless.
Removal of “Comment” Button from Comment Box
This feature gets rid of the comment button entirely and allows users to make comments with the press of the enter key. To be honest, this feature seems quite odd and could possibly lead to many accidental/unwanted postings.
Automatic Mentions
In order to “mention” others or places, users usually have to place “@” in front of what it is they wish to mention. This new feature gets rid of the need for “@” entirely and eases mentioning others. Facebook will automatically place and link a mention to those that are connected to your individual profile. However, useful this may be, not not everyone wants to be mentioned and may cause some privacy issues that will have to be addressed.
Written By Daniel T