Inside Facebook

Facebook makes a lot of small changes to the site on an ongoing basis. Over the past couple of weeks, Facebook has made the way users can express political views more flexible, changed the interaction when clicking on people you’re not friends with, and added a prompt to suggest additional friends when you make a friend request.

1. More flexible political views

Previously, all Facebook users had to choose their political views from a fixed list: Very Liberal, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Very Conservative, or Other. Many users have always found this limiting, but as Facebook has grown internationally and expanded across many new cultures, these choices have become especially insufficient. As Facebook’s Kate Losse wrote, “Since terms like “liberal” or “conservative” don’t necessarily mean the same thing in every country, we’ve switched to a global listing of national political parties.” Now, Facebook lets users enter anything into this field, and auto-suggests popular political parties.

2. No more empty page when you click on someone whose profile page you can’t view

Until recently, when clicking on Facebook users in search results, friends’ profiles, etc. whose profiles you weren’t allowed to view, Facebook kicked you out to a search results page with only that person listed. Now, Facebook pops up a modal window with that information, so you no longer leave the page you’re on if you can’t see their profile.

3. New prompts to suggest more friends when making a friend request

As part of its increasing campaign to help users make more friends on Facebook, Facebook recently added a new prompt (in some cases) after you send a friend request to optionally suggest more friends for that person. While this would likely be comfortable in many circumstances, it may also be awkward to suggest friends for someone you may not know very well and aren’t yet Facebook friends.

Seeing new Facebook features? As always, drop us a line at mail AT insidefacebook DOT com!