Inside Facebook

Advertisers will gain an important new way to target Facebook users thanks to changes launched earlier today at f8, we’ve learned after talking with two Facebook Ads and marketing executives. Facebook announced a new class of Open Graph applications that let users share what they listen to, watch, and read with friends. These news feed and Ticker stories will feature new “Listened”, “Watched”, and “Read” button. Advertisers on Facebook’s Ads API or who work with the Direct Sales team will soon have the option to target users who’ve shared through these apps or clicked these buttons, letting them reach consumers of their content that might not have Liked a related Page.

For example, rather than just targeting users who Like the band Coldplay’s Page, advertisers will be able to target any user who shared a Coldplay song through Spotify or another Open Graph application, and any of their friends who clicked “Listened” on a shared story about Coldplay. Granular targeting will allow advertisers to choose if they want to reach users who listened to a specific Coldplay song, any Coldplay song, or anyone who used the Spotify app. Advertisers will also be able to turn media sharing and usage of these feedback buttons into Sponsored Stories that turn what would have been news feed or Ticker stories into sidebar ads.

An added bonus of users sharing more about themselves and their behavior is that Facebook gain more data to power ad targeting. Facebook’s profile redesign last year made biographical data and interests more prominent, encouraging users to provide more information about who they are and what types of media and companies they care about.

Many users have interacted with more brands, artists, and pieces of media than they’re willing to list in their profile. However, they might be comfortable stating that they watched a movie their friend posts about. With the new feedback buttons, Facebook is turning these behaviors and activities into targetable information for advertisers.

At first, only music, video, and readable content will feature these new feedback buttons, but Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions David Fischer tell us the site is considering releasing more, including a “Want” button for products. Soon developers will be also be able to create their own feedback buttons. This could bring these new ad targeting opportunities to more industries such as ecommerce, consumer packaged good brands, and games.

Here are some more examples of how the new ad targeting capabilities could be used:

• A concert venue could target all users who said they listened to band to sell tickets for that band’s upcoming concert.
• A band could target all users who listened to one of the songs off their soon to be released album about that album going on sale on iTunes
• A big box retailer could target all users who shared or said they watched any movie starring Johnny Depp to sell a new DVD box set of the actor’s films
• A film studio could target any user who said they watched a trailer of a new film that a friend shared after watching it on IMDB.
• A tech conference could target any user who said they read an article on any of the major technology blogs
• A baby clothing retailer could target any user who said they read on article about how to buy clothes for infants on a blog for mothers.

A wide variety of media partners and news publishers have partnered with Facebook to allow uses to publish content to the site that can be immediately consumed by friends.

When users listen to a song on Spotify, watch a film on Netflix, read an article on News Corp’s The Daily, or use products by any other partners, that activity will be automatically published to the news feed Ticker and profile Timeline. Users can then click on the Ticker story to load the corresponding app and hear the song, watch the film, etc.

Previously, users had both grant an app initial permissions upon install and fill out a sharing prompt every time they wanted to publish something to Facebook. Now, users will grant a new type of permission that allows an app the ability to instantly publish activity without showing a prompt.

There are some privacy implications of this new app sharing scheme. While users might be comfortable sharing most of their Spotify listening habits, they might occasionally want to listen privately. Facebook could potentially introduce some sort of “incognito mode” to allow this, but there’s no indication of such a feature yet. Users might also grant persistent permission to an app without understanding what it means, or forget they’ve done so, and get angry when they see their activity published.

In addition to publishing posts to the Ticker, activity will be published to special content tabs on the profile TImeline. When users interact with music, video, and text content, they’ll have the ability to use new feedback options: Listened, Watched, and Read. More specific than simply Liking a friend’s update, these buttons will let users share how they’ve also consumed the content.

This will create big new opportunities for marketers and advertisers. Those using the Facebook Ads API or that work with Facebook’s Direct Sales ad team will be able to target users according to their interaction with content. Previously advertisers could only target user that formally Liked a Page, and had no way to target users based on their Likes of news feed content.

Media apps will launch today, and other lifestyle apps and games that depend on the Timeline will be rolled out alongside the redesigned profile over the next few weeks.

Today at f8, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new profile feature called “Timeline” that lets a user’s friends see their most important content from their entire time on Facebook. Available on both the web and mobile versions of the site, Timeline can be filtered to show just recent content, content from the last year, or from multiple years all on one page. Users can set a big banner image to appear at the top of their Timeline, and expand or remove panels of content they want to feature or hide.

Users will also be able to use apps to generate “Reports” of specific types of content such as all the meals they’ve cooked. There are also new types of updates users can publish specifically for major life events such as getting a new pet, starting a relationship, or moving to a new city. Timeline will make the profile a much more engaging place and likely increase the amount of time users spend there.

Facebook will automatically choose content to show in Timeline based on Likes, comments, and other signals. To edit the Timeline, users can scroll through see hidden updates or look through a private activity log. They can then choose to make certain updates visible to friends in the Timeline.

To allow users to add media and lifestyle content to the Timeline and also the home page Ticker, a new class of Open Graph apps is also being launched. Users will grant permissions to the apps and they will then automatically publish activity to the Timeline and Ticker. Zuckerberg calls this a “frictionless experience”, as users don’t have to constantly fill out sharing prompts.

The Timeline also features tabs for music, video, and other content types. Here users can view a collection of all the content of a certain type that a friend has consumed. The music tab will show all the songs a user has listened to and playlists they’ve published, while the video tab will show a user’s most watched film and their recently watched TV show episodes.

Timeline will rollout over the next few weeks.  Users who want to learn more about Timeline and get it on their profile as soon as it’s released can sign up on the new Timeline about page.

Facebook has updated its mobile site m.facebook.com with the hybrid news feed launched for the web version of the site that it had launched on Monday. Since the Facebook for iPhone and Android apps both pull the news feed from the mobile site, the 93 million daily active users of the two apps now also see a single feed with Top Stories followed by Recent Stories. Users of these mobile interfaces no longer have the option to view separate Top News and Most Recent feeds.

For most users, there’s now no escaping the sweeping changes Facebook implemented this week. While those who never realized they could switch between relevancy-sorted and reverse-chronological feeds will now be more likely to see fresh, compelling updates, others who grew accustomed to bouncing between the feeds may be displeased that they need to alter their behavior.

At the top of their feed, mobile users will see now Top Stories, followed by Recent Stories, and finally “From Earlier Today” which includes older Top Stories and Recent Stories. Since the two popular smart phones apps pull the news feed from the mobile site, Facebook was able to make just a single code changes to update both the iPhone and Android app interfaces without requiring users to download a software update.

Facebook uses a variety of signals to determine what updates become Top Stories, denoted with a blue triangle in the top left corner. On the web version users can mark and unmark updates as Top Stories. Mobile users don’t have this option, and must accept the decisions of the EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithm.

However, users can filter the news feed according to type of update, such as Status Updates, Events, or Photos. Facebook has also made its new Smart Lists available as mobile news feed filters in addition to all of a user’s manually built Friend Lists. These give users some options if they’re not content with what they’re seeing in the new default “All Stories” feed.

The hybrid news feed feels a bit more natural on mobile, where a quick, lightweight experience works better than having a ton of options like on the web. While many users are still complaining about the web interface changes and the introduction of the Ticker, we believe some of the announcements made later today at the f8 conference will illuminate the importance of the recent redesign.

Users shouldn’t expect the mobile changes to stop, as we hear Facebook may release a major redesign of its popular smart phone apps. It might also launch the standalone mobile photos app that leaked in June. We’ll be providing deep analysis of what the announcements at f8 mean to users and developers, so check back later today.

Some Facebook Page admins are now seeing a new tab called “Per post” in the data exports from Page Insights. Data in the tab includes impressions per post and the total percentage of a Page’s fans that left feedback on the post. Previously, admins could only see daily impressions and feedback data in Insights. Per post data could only be found on a Page’s wall below the posts themselves, forcing admins to manually copy down impression and feedback data.

If rolled out to all Page admins, the addition of per post data to Page Insights will make it easier for brands to track what kinds of posts and timing result in the higher exposure and engagement. For example, admins could determine what hour of the day is the best for publishing. The newly available could also encroach on the business of some Facebook Page analytics providers, though these companies also offer advanced analysis of the data.

Amit Lavi, Social Media Director at Abagada was the first to spot the new data. He tells us that “Now, everyone with knowledge of Excel will be able to find the right time of day and day of week to post content. Also, with a bit of manual categorization, admins will also be able to assess which content works better for their Page.”

Facebook added per post data the admin view of Page walls of authenticated Pages with over 10,000 fans in January. Oddly, it didn’t simultaneously begin showing the same data in the Insights user interface or the .XLS or .CSV data exports. We’ve received information that the per post data in the exports doesn’t always go back as far as requested. This means there’s a chance that that Insights data on post impressions and feedback might not be totally reliable, at least at first.

Page management companies that offer analytics services and dedicated Page analytics providers could lose some of their more budget-conscious customers to Facebook Insights. However, to pull actionable lessons from the Insights data, admins will have to do some legwork in Excel.

Professional analytics providers will likely be able to crunch the data more efficiently, derive more sophisticated best practices, and provide benchmark data aggregated from across their clients. For example PageLever used its own collection of per post impressions data to determine that the average Page receives only 7.49 news feed impressions per post per 100 fans. Buddy Media used per post data to figure out that shorter post receive more engagement and that Thursday is the best day to post when looking across industries.

If Facebook makes per post data more easily accessible to all admins, it could also raise awareness of the need to analyze the data, which could in turn drive business for the providers of enterprise analytics tools and services. Either way, with time the data will help brands improve their Page post strategies. This could lead to more engaging branded content in the news feed, improving the Facebook experience for the average user. The next step will be for Facebook to provide data on clicks per post.

Today, viral media hub BuzzFeed is launches a Facebook app that aims to recreate the experience of discovering content on its website. Through the app, users can browse humorous images, interesting articles, and shocking videos, leave reactions using “LOL”, “Cute”, “Fail” and other buttons, and share BuzzFeed posts with friends via Facebook’s social plugins.

Along with yesterday’s release of the Wall Street Journal’s canvas app, the BuzzFeed app indicates a growing trend of publishers maximizing the exposure and referral traffic they gain from Facebook by creating standalone versions of their sites within the social network. BuzzFeed’s President Jon Steinberg tell us the company sees Facebook as “another type of news stand, and we want BuzzFeed to be available on every news feed stand people frequent.”

BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti, who previously cofounded the Huffington Post. The New York City-based site populates itself by algorithmically determining what content is trending on the internet, taking user submissions, and publishing picks by its editors. It now reports 15 million monthly unique visitors, and offers mobile app versions.

The company generates revenue in an innovative way. Rather than showing traditional display ads, it allows advertisers to sponsor BuzzFeed posts that mention them or relate to their business. BuzzFeed then dynamically selects the post related to a sponsor that is receiving the most engagement and shows it on the home page and as a “Partner” post amongst lists of organic content. In this way, BuzzFeed doesn’t actually show ads, just more content its visitors might have wanted to see anyway. BuzzFeed also has a program called Extensions that advertises for sponsored content on Twitter, Facebook via the Ads API, and other open inventory around the internet.

The BuzzFeed site displays Facebook’s Like, Send, and Comments Box social plugins as well as sharing buttons for several other platforms. Steinberg tells us that “Facebook is one of our largest sources of referral traffic, accounting for millions of referral visits a month.” With Facebook users already reacting well to its content, BuzzFeed saw a big opportunity in creating a native version within the social network that made sharing with friends even more seamless.

The BuzzFeed Facebook app streamlines its website to create a more laidback experience. Rather than bombarding users with choices of which post to view or channel to browse, users are immediately presented with a single post. They can choose to leave feedback or share it, or simply move on to the next post. This addictive, StumbleUpon-style flow keeps users constantly discovering new content they might want to share instead of navigating around the site.

BuzzFeed drops barriers to usage by not showing the permissions request for a user’s data until it absolutely needs it. To drive app growth, when users who granted permissions click an “OMG” or “Win” button on a post, they’re shown one friend and prompted to send them the post including a link to the app.

Though users must return to the website to add their own posts, search posts, or see channels such as “Hot on Facebook”, the lightweight app works well for killing time while waiting for a friend to respond to a Chat message or more stories to be added to the news feed. If the BuzzFeed and Wall Street Journal apps succeed, expect more publishers to build native versions of their sites on Facebook.

Facebook has made two significant changes to how users interact with Pages. Now, users don’t need to have Liked a Page to be able to post on a Page’s wall or comment on its updates. This allows more users to join conversations, which could add more perspectives to discussions but also dilute them with unrelated comments, or drown them with complaints.

Facebook also reached out to us today to announce that users will now see a Friend Activity tab on Pages. This shows users the Likes and comments on the Page’s posts and any mentions of the Page by friends, even if a mention is just text and not a tag. The tab creates a more personalized, relevant view of a Page that might be more engaging than seeing activity from strangers, especially for Pages that receive thousands of comments per post.

Page Walls Now Open to the Public

By previously reserving the right to comment to those who had Liked a Page, participation in a conversation was a value exchange. Users got to share their opinions, and Pages got to reach those users through the news feed and appear on their profile. This made it easier for Page admins to predict the volume of user posts they’d receive and need to moderate.

Now, any user can post or comment on a Page. This may be related to Facebook’s change to privacy around public posts and the new Subscribe feature. Users can Like and comment any public post, and all Page posts are public. This means if a user discovers a conversation or wants to post on the wall of brand’s Page they discovered through a friend or heard about in the news, they don’t have endorse the Page with a Like to join the conversation.

This could help Page’s get more people talking about them, but it could also lead them to have to moderate more negative feedback. A brand experiencing a public relations crisis could see thousands or even millions of users descend on its Page to leave complaints or insults without gaining any new fans.

Friend Activity Tab

Facebook has been showing a Friend Activity tab on Places Pages for a while, allowing users to see the check-ins to that Place by friends. Now Facebook has expanded the Friend Activity tab to all Pages. The tab’s name shows a counter of new activity from friends. Once clicked in a Page’s navigation menu, users see a list of all the Page’s posts that have been engaged with by friends, and all posts by friends that mention or tag the Page.

Popular Pages can often receive thousands of comments on their posts, or wall posts every few minutes — too much for most users to wade through to find posts or comments that interest them such as those by friends. The Friend Activity tab filters out strangers, providing a personalized view of how a user’s network has been interacting with the Page. This could help them find discussions to join, or inspire them to leave their own post because friends are more likely to see it.

By altering the way the site works, Facebook is inviting users to develop new behavior patterns. Similar to how the increase of the post character limit from 500 to 5,000 encourages deeper discussion, opening Page walls and the Friend Activity tab could make interacting with Pages more accessible and inviting. At the same time, changes to the social norms of Facebook could force users to reassess why the site is valuable to them.

Users part of the initial roll out of the news feed redesign announced yesterday are also receiving several other unannounced changes to Facebook’s interface. These include an expansion of the character limit on posts from 500 to 5,000, a rollout of the floating navigation bar we saw tested last week, the ability to edit bookmarks in the home page’s left navigation bar, and a more convenient way to leave birthday greetings. Over the last few days Facebook has also buried the poke button within a drop down menu, and removed the ability to accompany a friend request with a message.

By launching these interface alterations now rather than amongst other sweeping updates at the f8 developer conference on Thursday, Facebook may be able to reduce the shock to users. The timing will also help the site keep attention focused on Platform-related updates that directly impact developers. Unfortunately, the combination of so many changes with the prompts necessary to explain them gives the home page a foreign look that may turn off some users.

Any update to the core features of the site produces some backlash, and changing the news feed means changing a lot of people’s ingrained behaviors. Still, the merger of the Top News and Most Recent feeds and the addition of the Ticker may be inspiring more complaints than Facebook has seen since it abruptly changed user privacy controls in 2009.  Our commenters were highly critical of the Ticker’s design as Facebook tested it over the last few months, and AllFacebook reports that large volumes of complaints are now being publicly published by the site’s users.

Facebook’s strategy over the years has been to gradually test and roll out changes, but between the last week and f8 the service will have changed dramatically in a short period of time. Newer users already feeling overwhelmed with the site, such as older age groups, may give up if too many features suddenly change. Facebook might consider delaying any changes not directly tied into the major Platform announcements until users adjust.

Today, Facebook shows no signs of slowing down, though, as it has begun rollout of the following additional changes alongside the news feed redesign:

5,000 Character Limit on Posts

Previously, the maximum length for Facebook posts was 500 characters, which was appropriate for most social updates. However, it may have been limiting for those trying to use Facebook as a lightweight blogging platform — something encouraged by the Subscribe asymmetrical follow feature launched last week.

Now Facebook posts can be as long as 5,000 characters and comments have a maximum of 8,000 characters. This will allow deep discussions about complicated topics to take place within the site. If users reach the character limit while posting, Facebook allows them to instantly convert the update into a Note. In the news feed, long posts show just their first 1,200 or so characters.

The change takes another talking point away from Google+, which places no character limit on posts. Long posts could make the news feed look too dense or even boring, especially compared to Twitter’s stream of 140 character updates. Facebook may need to reduce the number of characters shown above the fold in news feed posts to keep the news feed easy to digest.

Floating Navigation Bar

The top navigation bar now floats and remains visible as users scroll down pages, as we saw tested last week. This gives users access to their notifications, Messages, requests, account and privacy settings, search bar, and a home page link at all times. We believe this will increase the average Facebook session time by making it easier for users to return to the news feed or check new notifications when they reach the bottom of a page and might have otherwise left the site.

Facebook has also slightly altered the appearance of the bar, replacing the “Profile” link with a user’s profile picture, and the “Account” link with a small arrow that opens the settings drop-down. This gives the top navigation bar a more minimalist design.

Edit Home Page Bookmarks

Hovering over a bookmark in the home page’s left sidebar now reveals a pencil icon that lets users edit that bookmark or the settings for the thing it represents. Here are the options users receive when clicking the edit icon on different types of bookmarks:

• News feed – Manage who is hidden from the news feed
• Messages and Events – Remove the bookmark from or rearrange its place within the Favorites bookmark section
• Friend Lists – Add to Favorites or hide the bookmark
• Apps – Edit app settings including permissions, add to Favorites, or delete the app
• Groups – Edit Group settings including notifications, add to Favorites, leave Group
• Pages – Add to Favorites

These changes will make it easier to unhide someone from the news feed, remove unwanted apps, and silence noisy Groups.

Streamlined Birthday Geetings

When users click on the birthdays section of the home page’s right sidebar, a popover is revealed with wall post entry fields for the profiles of all friends with birthdays that day. This allows users to quickly post “Happy Birthday” or a more personal greeting to each friend since they don’t have to visit their profiles individually.

Hidden Poke Button

As first spotted by AllFacebook, the Poke button on the profile is no longer visible by default. Instead, it has been buried in a drop-down menu in the top right of the profile along with options to video call, report/block, and suggest friends.

The poke is a relic of the earliest versions of Facebook, when users had few other means of communicating with friends or strangers. Since then, “poke wars” have become running jokes between friends. However, the feature is also often used by men to try to flirt with women they don’t know, which can create an offensive atmosphere for some women. Rather than suddenly removing the option, which could anger some users, Facebook appears to have chosen to make it less prominent in hopes of weening users off it.

No More Friend Request Messages

Previously, users could include some text when sending a friend request to greet a potential new friend and explain how they know each other. This option is no longer available, forcing users to send a separate Message. This might reduce the likelihood users will send an accompanying Message, which could increase the volume of rejected friend requests.

[Thanks to Dian Rosanti for the tip on birthdays]

The Wall Street Journal today launched its news reader Facebook app WSJ Social. It lets users view streams of stories sorted by the newspaper’s staff, their friends, or a Facebook news feed-style algorithm that shows stories with the most Likes. Stories can be instantly shared with Facebook friends using Like buttons, and users can  reach a leaderboard by getting the most subscribers.

The release of the canvas app shows that the WSJ sees potential in Facebook beyond driving referral traffic. Rather than complicate its website with tacked on plugins of stories Liked by friends, it has created an entire experience around customization and recommendations. By hosting the app within Facebook, WSJ may also be hoping to suck up some of the social network’s massive time on site, and make users feel more comfortable sharing links to the publication.

The WSJ.com does currently display Facebook’s Like button and Comments box on its website, though these don’t help organize the site’s content by relevancy to the viewer. However, Facebook’s news feed has revealed the stickiness of an algorithmically sorted stream of content chosen by friends. WSJ Social will allow the publication to experiment with personalization similar to the news feed without disturbing the traditional, lightweight, professionally-curated news reading experience its core audience expects from WSJ.com.

When users read articles within the app, they’ll see the Facebook Comments box prominently displayed in the sidebar rather than buried at the bottom of the page. They’ll also only see the Facebook Like button — no Twitter, Google, or other sharing plugins. In this way, the proliferation of WSJ Social-style apps within Facebook, such as the app “Editions” reportedly being developed by CNN and The Washington Post, a could threaten other social platforms populated by usage of their sharing buttons on websites.

WSJ Social’s “My Latest News Feed” makes it unique from other sites such as Twitter and Facebook that let users subscribe to updates from thought leaders. This default view of the home page holds the app’s true value — combining recommendations by friends, thought leaders, and the wisdom of the crowd via the Like button with the picks of WSJ’s entire editorial staff as well as the editors of particular sections. This feed shows the articles picked by the editors a user has followed but that also have high Like counts, and is likely to present highly relevant content.

To provide suggestions of WSJ and peer editors to follow and encourage users to engage, the app offers a leaderboard of the day’s most popular editors. By Liking stories and getting friends to follow them, users can rise to this list and be subscribed to by strangers. Vanity and feeling of obligation to one’s existing subscribers could push users to frequently return to the app and share WSJ stories, driving traffic for the publication.

The presence of additional curation controls does mean less room for content. The panels representing stories in WSJ Social aren’t large enough to show blurbs or in some cases even photos that make choosing what to read easier. At the same time, the cleaner interface may be less exhausting to casual readers. Living within the Facebook chrome may also give WSJ Social advantages as Facebook moves to itself becoming a media hub with a “Read” button to help users tell friends they’ve consumed and enjoyed an article.

For the first month after launch, sponsorships from Dell and Intel will make all WSJ content available to WSJ Social users. After that, though, the app will mirror the website and requires users to pay to access premium content such as expanded coverage and article archives. The more time users spend reading the WSJ, whether on the app or the website, the more likely they are to pay for unlimited access. And with users spending so much time on Facebook, the exposure generated through WSJ could aid the publication’s bottom line as print dies out.

Facebook just announced that it is redesigning the home page’s news feed to combine the Top News and Most Recent feeds. Rather than having to choose between tabs, users will automatically see Top News content first if highly relevant updates have been published since they last checked Facebook, and see Most Recent content first if they’ve been visiting frequently. A Ticker in the right sidebar will display a firehose of real-time updates that users can click to expand and engage with.

Taking the burden of choice off of users by showing them both relevancy filtered and a raw stream of updates at the same time will ensure there is always something compelling waiting on the home page. This could help Facebook turn quick visits to check for new messages or notifications into longer sessions. The merger of the feeds will also keep users from missing important updates or being bored by seeing identical updates in both feeds.

Facebook product manager Keith Schacht tells us “This about seeing the most important content no matter how frequently you check Facebook.” He explains that the improved news feed is akin to a newspaper that shows you the biggest news that broke since you last read rather than just the headlines from the last day. Some users will ge the updated home page today, and Facebook will be fully rolling it out in the coming weeks.

A Single, Dynamic News Feed

When users return to the redesigned home page, they won’t simply see the same feed they were last viewing. Instead, they’ll see a Top News segment at the top of the feed displaying important stories by close friends or those with lots of Likes and comments that they haven’t seen yet, followed by Most Recent-style content.

If nothing critical has been published since their last visit, they’ll immediately see “Recent Stories”. Those with lots of friends or especially active networks might see Top News if they haven’t visited in as little as 15 minutes, though it may take hours for less connected users.

Facebook’s EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithm can be taught a user’s preferences with in-line controls. Clicking ‘X’ next to a story brings up options to mark or unmark an update as top news. Along with the recently added Subscribe options for managing the frequency and types of posts in the feed, these controls will allow power users to refine their news feed. The wide variety of news feed options might overwhelm novice users, but Schacht says they were designed so they could be ignored if users don’t need them.

To further enrich the home page, photos posted to the news feed will appear larger than before. For instance, a post about new photos being added to an album will show the most popular photo from the album at roughly four times the standard news feed photo size. This may get users to open more photos from the feed and begin sifting through albums — an activity that generates tons of time-on-site for Facebook.

Real-Time Ticker

To replace the separate Most Recent feed, Facebook has added a real-time firehose of all updates by all of a user’s friends to the right sidebar. The Ticker is even more comprehensive than the old Most Recent feed that would still filter out minor updates about some friends.

To make it small enough to fit beside the primary news feed, the Ticker shows activity stories in plain text such as “Kate O’Neill added a new photo to the album Mobile Uploads”, rather than actually showing the photo. Users can hover over a Ticker update to view a popover of the full story it describes, and click to add Likes or comments. For screens of adequate size, the Ticker snaps to the right sidebar above the Chat buddy list, and users can use a sliding divider to choose to see more Ticker updates or more online friends.

While the old separate feeds did update in real-time, Schacht tells us it wasn’t fast enough to inspire conversation. The Ticker is designed to surface currently occurring activity. For instance, Schacht says ”maybe mutual friends are have a conversation shown in the Ticker. You join in and have the serendipitous moment of a shared conversation in real-time.” In this way, users can have an ad hoc online meetup, like a Google+ Hangout that occurs in the feed rather than video.

Simplicity for New Users, Hidden Options for Veterans

With the average Facebook user having less than 200 friends but some having over 1000, Facebook’s design must accomodate a wide variety of use cases. Smart Lists, Subscribe, the rumored Read, Watched, and Listend buttons, and today’s news feed changes all seem to promoting an interface where users don’t have to make any choices or do any work by default, but can opt to refine their experience.

In this case, novice users who visits the home page will immediately see popular stories first, recent stories if they’ve read all the popular ones, and real-time stories in the periphery without a single click. Power users can then apply Friend Lists filters, mark or unmark stories as Top News, and dial up or down the presence of specific friends to customize the news feed.

Facebook tells us tests of the redesign have received “positive reactions” from users. However, when we spotted the single news feed and Ticker last month, the response from those seeing it was almost universally negative. Though Facebook users are always resistant to change, some had valid points about the Ticker being too cumbersome and requiring too many clicks to scan large volumes of updates.

It may take some getting used to, and Facebook will need strike the right balance between Top News and Recent Stories in the primary feed, but the redesign could make Facebook a more relaxing experience. Rather than having to click multiple tabs, worry major updates have slipped by, and miss content Facebook hasn’t deemed important enough, all this content will be immediately available from the home page.