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Facebook Testing New Access Points for Viral Communication Channels
October 19th, 2009
| By Justin Smith | 10 Comments » |
Earlier today, we covered two upcoming changes to Facebook’s home page and News Feed:
- Facebook is returning to a “Top News” stream as the default home page feed, pushing the real-time stream to a secondary tab.
- Groups are now getting partial News Feed presence.
Now, some users are seeing additional UI tests Facebook is running in the site’s header. In the tests, the header contains new icons for users to access Facebook’s core communication channels: notifications, requests, and messages.
The number of unread notifications, requests, or messages appears in a red bubble in the header, just as notifications do now in the site’s application bar at the bottom of the screen. By mousing over any one of the three new icons, users can access unread messages in a dropdown.
Given the prominence of the notification and request alerts, we would expect this change to increase viral channel engagement and conversion for app developers. However, three red balloons at the top of the screen may also seem daunting to some users who have many applications.
“The navigation menu is just one of many things across the site that we’re testing in order to simplify and improve the user experience,” a Facebook spokesperson told us.
Thanks to Navarr Barnier for the tip.
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October 19th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Yay for MouseHunt!!
October 19th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
It’s quite cool. I really like it and am just waiting for these options to get live.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:57 am
[...] Facebook. Τα νέα όμως δεν σταματάνε εκεί και σύμφωνα με το Inside Facebook αλλά και με εκπρόσωπο της εταιρίας που μίλησε στο [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 2:16 am
[...] Vía: Inside Facebook [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 6:43 am
New layout for the homepage of Facebook!!!
http://www.facebookexpressions.it/en/nuovo-layout-per-la-homepage-di-facebook%E2%80%8F.html
October 20th, 2009 at 7:34 am
I’m not so sure about the top notifications..
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:19 am
Some how my friend list named “High School” “Middle School” and “Elementary School” got automatically deleted today…
October 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
[...] tests that we’ve seen in the wild have included new access points for Facebook’s communication channels on the top menu bar in one case, and a missing bottom menu bar in the other, but these are just [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 11:56 am
[...] tests that we’ve seen in the wild have included new access points for Facebook’s communication channels on the top menu bar in one case, and a missing bottom menu bar in the other, but these are just [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
[...] weeks now, we and other publications have been seeing screenshots and hearing rumors about big changes that Facebook has planned for its platform. What the company [...]