Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Unveils Timeline, Updated Open Graph
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook today announced a new Timeline feature and a new type of social app under its Open Graph. They're not available yet, but almost all the details are finally official."
The only thing missing from the new profile is the ability to set huge animated gifs as my background.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
in the old days people would go to a religious place to think about their importance and place in the universe. in the 21st century you show off your entire life to the world on the internet
Forgive me if my memory is failing me, but didn't Facebook HAVE a timeline about 5ish years ago? You know, back when you could do quizes on your friends' interests, you put your home address up because only your University friends would see it, and there were NO RELATIVES?
You might also want to include:
Facebook Adds TV & Movies to the Stream
Spotify Comes to Facebook
Yahoo Hooks Up With Facebook for Socially Curated News
It's simple. The companies FB has partnered with to mine that data want their jobs to be easier. So it's now up to the users to put the connections in there that they either couldn't (due to too much noise, legal concerns, what have you) or didn't want to spend the money on developing. That's what this is all about. Make it voluntary and in most instances you've made it legal. Make it necessary and you have the users doing the hard work for you.
Given how much effort it takes just to get a simple feed of stuff from friends, the way it used to be, I have the feeling that this portends the end of usefulness for the facebook. Perhaps the Oatmeal is right, by 2014 it's nothing but old women playing games who have the time to put those connections together.
In google stock, if you can afford it that is.
Here's the primary problem with this: Uncontrolled Content Publishing
When I'm online, whether I'm using FB, Twitter, my blog, or whatever, if I put something out there, I *mean* to do it. I consciously make an effort to say "I'm at X", "I'm doing Y", or "I'm interested in Z." With these sorts of systems in place, your personal self-content ends up being a huge stream of consciousness instead of curtailed snippets of meaning. Not that all of my status updates, posts, and so forth are meaningful, but they meant something to me, and at least I had a particular effort in publishing them.
I realize that content controls and other mechanisms may come with this to help filter and whittle the stream into something manageable, but the vast majority of people won't, and it'll turn it into a mess. I don't give a damn what you're listening to, I don't care what website you're cooking a recipe from tonight, and I sure as hell don't care that you, once again, checked into your own house. Folks like this will be dumped in a big hurry.
I "get" what FB is after, but I fear for the worst of it to be implemented and used by the masses. Everyone has a voice, but not everyone should be heard. Even I'm irrelevant to the majority.
"Everybody hates the new layout and are leaving". Seems odd FB would make such a change right as Google+ registration opens.
Does it come with auto-on 20 second clips of poor bitrated versions of favourite songs?
Not the consumer. Google or Facebook, it doesn't matter.
For those that listen to Leo Laporte on TWiT, didn't he mention something similar by some big-name company? This was maybe 2 or 3 months ago. It also used Facebook as a source. Anybody remember what it was?
I'm 99% sure that none of my friends really *want* this level of detail in their profiles. FB is a simple way to connect and chat, and share pictures for 99% of it's members. Forcing this functionality is only going to piss off users.
And I don't care if you don't care that I nuked my facebook account. Yes, I really did. You're stating the obvious point. FB doesn't give a rats a$s what it's users want, it's just doing it's own thing and what it thinks is "best".
Their stock didn't go up due to that. In fact it went down more than $100 a share, or16%, from the time google+ launched to that milestone.
Stock price measures many things. Market factors, industry factors and company factors. The first two are beyond Google's control. The phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats" is often used to say not to read too much into a rising stock price when everyone else is also going up. The same is true when everyone is going down.
Even if you only "know" both of them thru some passing knowledge, you can see their private chats and messages so long as 1 of the 2 or (for multi person messages, at least 1) of them has not blocked it explicity.
Oh wait, I meant "dislike".
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I guess you're cool on slashdot as long as you complain about everything Facebook does, regardless of whether it is good or bad. So keep complaining about how it is getting too much like MySpace, or Twitter. Keep complaining about how Facebook is further diminishing your privacy each time a new feature is added. Be sure to include some conspiracy theory. Most importantly, threaten to close your account. Then you'll be really cool.
Complaints can actually be well-founded, and those who dislike the subject of a news story are just as welcome to contribute their opinion. I might suggest that Slashdot's main audience is a little beyond caring about who thinks they're "cool" - didn't you see the tag out front? "News for Nerds"? If you want a hivemind, seek out Reddit or 4chan, though there are plenty of good people in both of those communities too.
Get over yourself. It is no secret that what you put on Facebook is not private. It is not secret that they use your data to drive targeted advertising campaigns.
An open mission or goal can still be objectionable. Dismissing someone's objections doesn't actually mean you've won an argument, or even started one. Doing so simply makes you look arrogant and presumptuous.
You will not cancel your account, so stop threatening to. No one on here gives an ish. Zuckerberg isn't reading your slashdot post either. He doesn't give an ish. So go try your, "I swear I'll walk out of here right now!", on your girlfriend or the guy trying to sell you a used car. You may have better luck.
An "ish"? This is a site for grownups, and you can use four letter words. For example, I don't care one fucking bit for your sneering tone.
Zuckerberg won't read the post, but others will, and ultimately he has investors, employees, and business partners who can be rattled by widespread criticism and rejection of new functionality that's too unpleasant. If nobody talked about things they disliked, or expressed the objections you resent so vociferously, then no one would learn otherwise, and things would simply die off without an apparent cause, or stupidity would be perpetuated. And, for what it's worth, I deleted my Facebook account after reading about the F8 conference.
The timeline is innovative. It allows you to showcase the most memorable or important times of your life. It gives a better idea of who someone is than their most recent status updates. With the current interface, every post is given equal importance. Why would you complain about a new feature that allows you to give prominence to the posts that best define your life? Lastly, this is a feature that sets it apart from the other Twitter style status updates. It fixes a major flaw IMHO. FTFA: "Zuckerberg says the Timeline is “a place that you are proud to call your home.” While the current Facebook profile is completely based on showing all the latest updates, the Timeline is meant to highlight all the important updates of your life."
The timeline sounds time-consuming. I have hobbies, a job, a family, grad school, friends (real ones!). Why would I want to spend more time pondering what's important to the grand scheme of my life every time I want to send out a brief status update? Why would I want to assign a label like "home" to a web page dedicated solely to devouring data about my life to serve up to marketers and advertisers? Why should I bother with a new paradigm that would ultimately make my life more exposed, complicated, and tedious? Every overhaul Facebook rolls out makes the experience more complicated, when all it originally did was serve as a kind of community bulletin board for an inner circle. It's a metastasizing freakshow, and I'm just plain done.
Forcing what functionality? Giving visitors full control of what displays on their profile page? Allowing them to pick what is important? Allowing them to make posts for past events to fill in missing information?
Which of these will your friends not want? What level of detail are you referring to? There is no detail in the timeline that you cannot find already. It is just a matter of allowing users to weight their items.
How does the timeline not fit into the "connect and chat, and share pictures". Also, where did you get your statistics that this is the only thing 99% of members want. Did you forget this? http://socialtimes.com/facebook-gamers-hours-per-month_b24156
who uses facebook anymore?
Complaints can actually be well-founded, and those who dislike the subject of a news story are just as welcome to contribute their opinion.
My point is that there were no valid complaints. In all of the posts before mine, it was the typical knee jerk reaction. Everyone complained, but no one provided any real argument as to why. You were the first one to provide something of substance, about it being "time consuming". Although, I don't see much substance in it. You can post status updates normally, since newer items will be appear at the top unless you chose to weight them.
Zuckerberg won't read the post, but others will, and ultimately he has investors, employees, and business partners who can be rattled by widespread criticism and rejection of new functionality that's too unpleasant. If nobody talked about things they disliked, or expressed the objections you resent so vociferously, then no one would learn otherwise, and things would simply die off without an apparent cause, or stupidity would be perpetuated.
Maybe, maybe not. It is likely that they get their feedback from people posting complaints on Facebook itself. Regardless of that, with constructive complaints, the first few posts on here were a waste. In order for the system you described to work, people need to express what they like or do not like constructively.
An "ish"? This is a site for grownups, and you can use four letter words. For example, I don't care one fucking bit for your sneering tone.
Thanks for proving my point about being cool, by showing me how you can swear on-line, and suggesting I do the same.
There's one annoying behavior in FB, not fixed until the last time I verified it. When you comment something on a person's wall, such comment appears in all your contact walls, and there was no way to avoid it, supposedly because the owner of such wall must decide that, not you. How hard was to build, via programming, a feature that would allow the option 'This message will be visible only in this wall' or 'Do not allow this comment to be forwarded to other walls'?
Do you even use Facebook??? You seem to be confusing walls and the news feed...
Thanks for proving my point about being cool, by showing me how you can swear on-line, and suggesting I do the same.
I didn't actually prove anything there, save that I was personally irritated by a euphemism for a curse word. Constructive complaints are being created 'round the world by tech journalists paid to express lucid, well-constructed thoughts and opinions. I'm a geologist by profession. The byzantine intricacies of social media, and Facebook's ongoing "bad little boy who acts guilty for being caught stealing a cookie, then goes right back to doing it" routine, are beyond my regular study or interest. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt any more.
You're all right. You can stay on my lawn.
How much does M$ and Failbook pay you to astroturf for them using multiple accounts?
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide
How do you do that then?
... is the really, really slick new timeline features. I'm having a hard time coming up with anything negative to say about the new timeline based layout. For those of you that have enabled it, what are your thoughts? I'm actually very impressed, and I think Facebook just leveled from my perspective.
A community-oriented lyrics site
Walls are public. If you want to send a message to a user privately, send them a message. Durr.
US version only. Click on Friends - check subscriptions - enable only those you want enabled. Shows up on Home in the upper right corner.
Note if one friend has permissions (by default) enabled, you still get to hear both friends even tho one turned it off.
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Forcing what functionality? Take the wall within a wall as an example. Take the need to go in and edit notifications after they forced basically a "summary" system. Take the ever bloating javascript "utility" that allows users to do "more" with their wall. Hell, you can't drag a mouse across the latest iteration of the feeds page without triggering 2-3 pop-ups. There's no way to disable any of that crap with the exception of the notifications. And I don't much care that there's still a choice there, FB changed what I had, and made me go through the effort to undo what they thought was "best". And they use that tactic ALL THE DAMN TIME. It's gotten old.
See above for what my friends will not want.
Timeline is just a tiny part of the garbage that FB is deploying. See the other posts around here. Timeline doesn't NOT fit in, it's just more bloat. That, and as many others have noted, they're basically putting all the effort on users to organize their stuff more so they can have a more complete picture of your history for targeted ads and products. Think about how much more information they'll have when everyone starts dating all their content specifically. Suddenly you have a *large* cross-section of things that happen to mine for even more intrusive details about users.
No thanks. Opting out now, and wondering why I didn't long ago.
I don't see anything to do with chats there.
You have to have chat on - if you disabled it (because it's really annoying) you won't see it.
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I have stopped supporting any Facebook applications. They change their API too often, their own examples don't work half the time, and I know that connecting a website up to Facebook is just giving them revenue in the form of user data. Yeah, I've lost some work, but I'm so much happier now...
Fair enough. Honestly, I don't like 99% of the interface changes they make, but I think the timeline looks very promising and innovative. The concept of being able to weight you posts to display information in a non-chronological order just makes sense to me. I can't think of any recent web projects I've done that didn't need a way for the client's data entry folks to provide a custom sort order.
I agree with you about moving the mouse and triggering popups. Also, the AJAX loading of more comments and messages makes it almost impossible to click on links on the bottom of the page. If you have an account, go into your messages and try to click on Archived in the footer. You can't, whether using the Page Down button, or the mouse, as soon as you reach the bottom off the page it loads more messages. You cannot click the link until you've reached the end of the message list.
I already said what was innovative about the timeline. I don't need to repeat myself. You could also try reading the article for yourself.
I'm not sure why you are comparing a forum, or e-mail, or RSS to social networking.
It's the kind of thing I'd love to see an open version of, that I could run on my own servers and leave to my children. Sadly, filling in all that data for FB's use just ain't going to happen.
it's because you're friend's wall is set to be viewable by 'friends of friends', by your friend.
with Zuckerberg being the puppet master, selling off access to our life stories to corporate marketers.
If only every life was a straight progression from happiness to more happiness. Most people don't date and marry and then make a baby with the first person they meet. Who wants a public timeline with a huge tragedy like a lost child or a spouse that leaves you, or a series of dating relationships that look creepy when two years buzz by in twelve seconds? But those kinds of events are what many people live through. Unless it becomes so tailored that it is no longer representative of a person's life, rather with their current way of living and looking at themselves in context, it's going to get turned off immediately by most users.
I had a similar train of thought while reading the article. Although, I was thinking of a painful present. If I understand correctly, a user has full control over his or her timeline. Here is the quote from Zuckerberg, "You have complete control of everything on your Timeline,".
The idea is to show the important, or happy, parts of your life. While reading the article, I was thinking about a the son of a relative that just died. If you look at his profile now, all you see is sadness. This is because the content is sorted in a descending chronological order. He is a better man than that. A timeline would show you when volunteers showed up to help him rebuild his business that was destroyed by fire, or a photo of the first dollar he made thereafter, or his wedding day.
As a person, each of us is more than our immediate past. As I see it, the timeline allows you to say who you are as a whole. So, you can showcase when you were married, or your first child was born, or the last fishing trip you took with your uncle before he passed away. This is certainly better than only showing the past four weeks when you lost your job, lost your dog, got a divorce, and got a DUI.
Chat != Wall posts
of course chat doesn't equal wall posts.
However, multi-person chats and chats between two people that are friends without permissions both turned off to you do in fact show up.
Had fun for a couple of days repeating what I overheard in my status so that my friends realized the whole world could hear them - or their moms might find out ...
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But apparently FB cleaned this up; I haven't been able to replicate it today.
The best part; ppl I warned about it DIDN'T CARE if "only FB" could see the chats; they were concerned primarily that their chats might be broadcast to the world. *facepalm*
I don't use facebook a lot, but the problem is posting in one wall or discussion, and it being sent to wathever it is (another walls or feeds) of other people.
I don;t want to send a private message to a single person, I wanted to be part of such discussion, but such messages I posted, should not be forwarded beyond the scope of such discussion.
That's a very simple extra option to be available when you send the message.
Why?
I tried it occasionally for a year, didn't see the ROI, and haven't gone back.