Inside Facebook

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]

Facebook Pages that automatically publish content to the news feed through third-party apps such as HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Networked Blogs receive an average of 70% fewer Likes and comments on their posts per fan, according to a new study by Applum, developer of Page tool EdgeRank Checker. The study says the difference is likely due to Facebook reducing the prominence of posts published by third-party APIs, and Facebook collapsing updates from the same API from across a user’s friends and Liked Pages.

As Likes and comments increase a post’s prominence in the news feed — thereby driving more impressions and clicks — all Pages using auto-posting apps should look to switch to manual posting if possible.

Many companies, public figures, organizations, and news outlets (including our own) use auto-posting apps to create Facebook Page updates by syndicating their Twitter posts or converting their blog post headlines. This increases efficiency by relieving the admins of these accounts from having to copy and paste headlines and links from one platform to another.

The practice is subjectively considered  sub-optimal, though, as different platforms have different publishing capabilities and norms. Facebook for instance allows for rich media posts, so authors can select a thumbnail image and caption along with posting a link and headline. It’s typical for Twitter accounts to post up to a dozen times a day, but that volume could be viewed as spam on Facebook. Therefore, auto-posts can appear robotic and less compelling.

EdgeRank Checker’s study is the latest of several reports we’ve covered that reveal obstacles to engagement on Facebook. A recent PageLever study showed that the average Page gets only 7.49 daily unique news feed impressions on its posts and only 3.19 daily unique Page views per 100 fans.

EdgeRank Checker’s Data

Now, EdgeRank Checker has revealed empirical data that automatically published posts perform worse than manually published ones. EdgeRank Checker analyzed over 1,000,000 Facebook updates by more than 50,000 Pages with a combined reach of over 1,000,000,000 fans including duplicates. It then calculated the engagement ratio of the total Likes and comments on a Page’s post divided by the total fans of the Page at the time of the post for the ten most popular third-party publishing APIs.

The study determined that compared to the engagement of posts published manually to Facebook’s web or mobile interfaces, the reduction in engagement ratios of the top third-party publishing APIs are:

• HootSuite – 69% reduction
• TweetDeck – 73% reduction
• Sendible – 75% reduction
• Networked Blogs – 76% reduction
• RSS Graffiti – 81% reduction
• Twitter – 83% reduction
• Publisher – 86% reduction
• twitterfeed – 90% reduction
• dlvr.it – 91% reduction
• Social RSS – 94% reductions

These averaged out such that posts published through a third-party auto-posting app saw roughly 70% fewer Likes and comments than those published through Facebook’s first-party interfaces. This is in part due to Facebook’s direct punishment of the EdgeRank of posts by third-party APIs. Also, if a user’s news feed contain multiple posts from a single API, whether from a single author or several different Pages and friends, the posts are collapsed and must be unfolded to be seen.

The takeaway point of the study is that it is well worth it to take the extra minute to manually craft a Facebook post rather than auto-post. This might require changes to workflows or allocation of additional human resources. Still, Page owners could be sacrificing a lot of their social media performance and return on investment to save a small amount of time and effort.

Update 9/9/2011: We’ve now learned that Facebook maintains a secret whitelist of companies that are exempt from having content posted through their publishers consolidated across different Pages and clients. This protects them from a reduction in news feed impressions. The whitelist includes some top enterprise Page management tools from the Preferred Developer Consultant program including Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver, Context Optional and Syncapse. Read more.

Facebook has returned to showing users their complete buddy list in Chat with the addition of a “More Online Friends” section. Now users see their closest and recently interacted with friends at the top of the Chat buddy list, and can independently scroll down the Chat bar to view the online statuses of all remaining friends. Update: The change has since been confirmed by the Facebook Twitter account.

Facebook redesigned its instant messaging system last month such that instead of showing the online status of all of a user’s friends, it only showed around 20 of a user’s closest or most recently interacted with friends. The only way to determine the online status of other friends was search. Some users complained, and we wrote an article discussing the merits of being able to easily Chat with all friends, even distant acquaintances.

The change will allow users to quickly start conversations with the friends they Chat with most, but still be able to send Chats to the rest of their friends without conducting time consuming individual searches. The modification also shows Facebook is listening to feedback on product changes, despite some believing it ignores its users.

Typically when Facebook changes its interface, a small but vocal minority denounces it and demands Facebook revert to an older version. Often it’s not so much that the functionality is worse, but that it’s different than users are accustomed to and they don’t want to adopt a new behavior pattern. But with so many users and a readily available medium for sharing their discontent, a fraction of the user base can make it seem like there is larger disapproval.

Facebook has come to expect this, giving users time to adjust and looking at the actual usage data before considering whether additional changes are necessary. It famously watched hundreds of thousands of users protest the addition of the news feed to the home page, only to see it become one of the site’s most popular features.

In this case, though, press criticism, analysis of the design, and possibly the data pointed to users preferring the option to see the online status of all of their friends without having to search one-by-one. Users now get the best parts of both the old design and recent redesign: prominent access to their closest friends alongside options to scroll through all their friends and search for particular ones.

The re-redesign should be especially helpful for users with large numbers of friends that had many hidden from view in the previous design. It will help users reconnect with those they don’t interact with often, and make it easier to know who could be invited to an ad hoc group chat.

Users may also notice a new mobile phone icon next to some friends. This indicates that person is available to chat via Facebook’s new standalone push notification-delivered group chat iPhone and Android app Facebook Messenger, or the Chat-enabled primary Facebook mobile apps like Facebook for iPhone or BlackBerry. The icon will help users determine that it may be better to send shorter, simple messages rather than links or attachments that are more difficult to consume via mobile device.

The addition of “More Online Friends” to Chat should serve to improve Facebook’s relations with its users. It could rally users to be more vocal about future redesigns in hopes of attaining a similar outcome, but at least they know Facebook isn’t deaf to the opinions of those it serves.

[Thanks to Kevin Evanetski for being the first to tip us to this.]

Facebook’s Skype integration is set to include outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones along with group video chat, Skype’s Vice President Neil Stevens said. Forbes reports that the features will be implemented once the initial one-on-one video chat between Facebook users is rolled out completely — a month after launch it’s still only available to 1% the global user base. The planned features may reduce the need for users to run Skype’s dedicated desktop app, though some may still cost users Skype Credit to access.

Stevens also said a Skype/Facebook mobile calling app will become available. This could come as a feature in Facebook’s new standalone mobile group chat app Messenger, which was released yesterday and that 9to5Mac discovered includes hidden code and images indicating eventual support for video calling. The logos are even similar, as shown in my mashup below.

The addition of these features could help Facebook join smartphone OS developers in encroaching on traditional mobile carrier revenue streams such as SMS and voice calling plans. A Skype-enhanced Facebook Messenger could also pull engagement away from the native communication apps of handset makers including Apple. Both of these scenarios would require Facebook’s app to have a frictionless design and massive traction in order to challenge the straightforward voice, SMS, and messaging apps shipped with today’s smartphones.

Facebook and Skype worked together in the past to integrate features such as the news feed and phonebook into the Skype desktop app. Then in July the two announced a deep, long-term partnership and launched intra-Facebook video calling. The simple, light-weight, in-browser extension of Facebook Chat used an automatically downloaded plugin to process calls so users wouldn’t have to launch a separate desktop app.

Skype’s voice-over-internet-protocol technology allows for cheaper voice calling than landline and mobile phone carriers offer, and video calling that can be more fun and intimate than voice calls. When combined into Facebook Messenger, which lets users communicate in real-time over push notifications, Facebook Chat, and Facebook Messages rather than sending overpriced SMS, Facebook will have an app capable of largely replacing a user’s expensive landline, mobile voice, and SMS plans.

The partnership could create a significant revenue stream for Facebook as well. Facebook would likely get a revenue share of what its users spend on Skype Credit to make outbound calls or conduct group video conferences. This could come as direct cut from Skype, or Facebook could require users to buy Skype Credit with Facebook Credits on which the social network levies a 30% tax.

Competing with Apple

Apple’s recently announced iMessage push-messaging service and FaceTime mobile and web video calling app could be bested by the Skype-enhanced Facebook Messenger. This is because they clumsily requires users to know the Apple email address of those they’re trying to reach, or both be on iPhones, as TechCrunch’s MG Siegler points out.

Facebook Messenger only requires users to be Facebook friends or know each other’s phone number, and already runs on both iOS and Android. Facebook’s internally developed Twilio-style API-to-SMS system could be used to alert those without the app that someone is trying to video call them and that they should download Messenger.

Better functionality won’t help if the labor of downloading Facebook Messenger prevents it achieving the traction necessary to challenge native handset communication apps. Facebook does have a massive potential audience, but would likely have to heavily cross-promote the app across its interfaces in a way that could annoy users to even approach this level of traction.

Accelerating Shift of Carriers to Data Revenue

The more users on Skype and push-based mobile messaging platforms, the less revenue mobile carriers can make on voice and SMS plans. The carriers are already preparing for the shift towards data plan-based business models, but voice and SMS will remain major revenue streams for the next few years. Facebook’s Skype partnership and Messenger could accelerate the shift.

Before, Skype and push messaging were more the domain of technology professionals and early adopters, but Facebook has the potential to bring them more mainstream. Those looking to cheaply make international calls to their grand parents, and teens with limited funds seeking to stay in constant contact with their friends might use Facebook’s app rather than voice and SMS.

Realistically, without a its own smartphone or mobile OS, Facebook can probably only offer a pale version of what it really wants to. Without being shipped with phones, a Skype-powered Facebook Messenger may only gain enough traction to take some engagement and revenue from mobile handset makers, OS developers, and carriers. Still, these were spaces Facebook wasn’t in a month ago, so its progress and potential are still quite disruptive.

Facebook has just launched a new free standalone mobile group messaging app for iPhone and Android called Facebook Messenger. It allows users to conduct one-on-one or group conversations, send photos, and privately share their location. Messages are delivered via push notifications to those with the app, and SMS, Facebook Chat, or Facebook Messages to those without it. The app heavily incorporates functionality and design from group messaging app Beluga, which Facebook acquired in March, and whose founders headed development.

Facebook Messenger should help users coordinate meetups and find each other, increase usage of Facebook’s direct communication channels, and compete with GroupMe and Fast Society. This is the first standalone app from the social network, which otherwise aggregates all its functionality into its primary “Facebook for…” native apps. This and leaked information about a standalone photo sharing app indicate that Facebook has recognized the demand for more lightweight, streamlined, specialized mobile apps.

A Shift to Standalone Apps

The integrated messaging platform Facebook launched in November unified Chat, Messages, mobile push notifications, and email, allowing users to have a seamless conversation regardless of what interface the participants were using. Other group messaging apps still worked better though, prompting Facebook to acquire Beluga, which already had a strong Facebook integration. Facebook Messenger goes one step further, allowing users to add contacts from their phone who they aren’t Facebook friends with to a conversation via SMS. While other group messaging apps, including Beluga, pay third-party cloud communication service Twilio to convert API calls into SMS, Facebook has built its own in-house SMS syndication system.

Before Messenger, users of Facebook’s mobile interfaces had to go through several clicks to check their Messages inbox. Ben Davenport, former co-founder and CEO of Beluga who also previously worked at Google, explained the need for a standalone app: “Messaging is so core to what people do on the phone. It has to be on the desktop. It needs to be fast and go directly in. Speed matters, because people are brutal when choosing communication tools.”

Messenger definitely lets you get to what you need in a single click, something its competitors previously had as an advantage over Facebook’s all-in-one apps. But with Facebook offering so many different features, a proliferation of standalone apps could lead more of a user’s home screen to be filled with Facebook than they want. In June, plans for a standalone Facebook mobile photo sharing app leaked. Facebook will need to make tough decisions about whether other features, such as Events, would work well as standalone apps.

Facebook isn’t promoting the app with any news feed stories about those who install Messenger, and the indication on the web interface that a message was sent from Messenger don’t link to the download page. Still, being branded with the Facebook name and its inherent virality could help it quickly grow to have millions of users. By launching before Google+ Huddles can gain traction, other group messaging apps can get any more popular, and as RIM with its BlackBerry Messenger stumbles, Facebook could be the first to take cross-medium group messaging mainstream.

Facebook Messenger Functionality

Once users have downloaded Facebook Messenger from the App Store or Android Marketplace and logged in, they’ll see all their existing Facebook inbox conversations imported. Users can start a conversation by adding one or more of their Facebook friends or phone numbers from their phone’s contacts. If someone is both a friend and a contact, users can select where to deliver the conversation’s messages. The app can help users save money on their mobile phone bill by allowing them to sidestep use of SMS while still sending real-time messages.

One of the most useful features is the option to click an arrow icon and include one’s current location with a message via a push-pinned map. This will make it easy for friends to find each other, especially in crowded public spaces such as parks or concert where meeting up is the goal but giving directions in text is difficult. Location is kept private within a conversation, and not published to Facebook via Places.

Other Facebook Messenger users can view a map within the app showing the locations of all conversation participants that have shared the info, or opt to click through to the Google Maps mobile app and get directions. Those receiving messages via Facebook’s web interface can open a Bing Map of the location from their inbox, but those accessing messages through Facebook’s primary mobile apps or m.facebook.com can’t see locations of others.

Users may also share photos with their messages. One thing lacking in Messenger that’s available in the primary mobile apps is the ability to search within or across conversations.

Push notifications alert users to new messages when they aren’t using the app. If this gets too noisy, though, they can mute all their conversations or specific ones temporarily or indefinitely.

To organize conversations, users can add a title and photo. To protect privacy, if users try to add more people to a one-on-one conversation, the message history is cleared. If they add additional participants to an existing conversation, they’re warned that these new people will be able see the conversation’s history.

Most of Facebook’s acquisitions have been talent-driven, or led to more subtle integrations of existing products. In this case, though, Facebook found a great service it didn’t offer, bought it, re-skinned it, wired it into its own system, and five months later it has significant new value to offer users. The sleek interface and deep integration into one of the world’s most popular instant messaging services could make Facebook Messenger an important part of every day communication.

>Read more about How Beluga Metamorphosed Into Facebook Messenger, including an interview with Lucy Zhang of the Messenger and Beluga teams, at Inside Mobile Apps

New Rules Could Delay Facebook IPO – Congress may change laws regulating companies with shareholders, ultimately meaning that Facebook could delay its IPO if it wanted to. Fortune Magazine reported that the rules currently state that companies breaking 500 shareholders must go public, but the new rules would allow companies to remain private indefinitely.

Facebook IPO Could Surpass $100B – Facebook may make an IPO in early 2012, according to a report from CNBC. What’s more, they are saying the valuation could be more than $100 billion.

Existing Rules Apply to Political Ads on Facebook - The FEC declined to rule on creating extra regulations for Facebook political ads, reported AllFacebook. This means that ads can be bought and run with the same disclosure that applies to other online ads instead of having to state who paid for an authorized the ads, which could take up much of their character limit.

Facebook Users More Social in Real Life – A Pew Center for Internet & American Life Project study found that Facebook users tend to be more trusting, have more closer friends, are more civically engaged and get more social support from friends in real life.

Most Will Engage With Facebook Political Messages – SocialVibe conducted a study on political engagement advertising, finding among other things, that 94% of users who engaged with political messages ended up watching the entire message, and almost 40% of them shared political ads with Facebook friends.

iOS Integrated With Facebook Before Twitter - TechCrunch wrote an interesting piece this week noting that, before Apple’s iOS deeply integrated with Twitter, it was pretty obvious the company had looked into doing the same thing with Facebook.

Copious Launches Social Marketplace – Copious, co-founded by former Facebook employee Jonathan Ehrlich, launched a social marketplace this week that’s meant to incorporate Facebook’s social data into the business of buying and selling merchandise between individuals. TechCrunch reported that Copious has raised $2 million, in part from Foundation Capital, Google Ventures and BlackBerry Partners Fund.

Iceland Crowdsources its Constitution – The Icelandic government has turned to Facebook, in part, to help draft a new Constitution. Members of the country’s constitutional council are posting drafts of clauses for the constitution, and fans are invited to leave their comments. The council is also streaming its meetings live.

Zuckerberg Talks to Kids – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to a graduating eighth grade class in Menlo Park, California. He told them that friendships are what make life meaningful, and gave the students some advice, “‘Everything that’s worth doing is actually pretty hard and takes a lot of work.”

Today, Facebook launched the Send dialog, which allows apps and websites to display a prompt for users to share content by sending a Facebook Message or email, or posting to one of their Facebook Groups. The Send Dialog takes the functionality of the Send button, which lets users initiate microsharing of stable web content, and allows developers to proactively ask users to microshare as part of their app or site’s flow.

The Send dialog will help drive referral traffic to apps whose content is too private to be shared with a user’s entire friend list. Facebook says it will be especially helpful for developers of ecommerce, travel, and event websites and apps, and it’s already active on Airbnb, Gogobot, Keepsy, Jetsetter, SniqueAway, and Viagogo.

Facebook released the Send button on April 25th to complement the share-to-all-friends Like button, take over functionality of its now deprecated Share button, and replace email buttons used on some sites. Today the company notes that 100,000 sites integrated the Send button in the first month, indicating the need for the private sharing capabilities that will be expanded through the Send Dialog.

Developers can now begin building the Send dialog into their flows using the code found in Facebook’s documentation. Similar to the Like button, it does not require extended permissions from a user, though this dialog does not currently support mobile usage. A Facebook employee tells us “Currently the Send Dialog activity is not available in Insights; we are planning to add this functionality in the near future.” This means developers should soon be able to see metrics about Send dialog views and clicks, and views and clicks of inbox Messages sent through the Send dialog, similar to data reported by the Send button.

Facebook says “the Send Dialog is appropriate when a person might otherwise send a personal email” and shouldn’t be used to communicate impersonal content such as of in-game status or to deliver invites. Facebook apps should instead use the Requests channel for that type of content.

Photo book site Keepsy is using the Send dialog so that users can share the photo books they’ve made from a combination of private photos and Facebook photos with the friends tagged in those photos. Rather than use the less customizable Send button, Keepsy displays a tab when you finish creating a photo book that says “Tell your friends” and shows the faces of tagged friends. When clicked, a Send dialog appears pre-populated with those friends as recipients.

The Facebook Message sent through the dialog could lead those friends back to the Keepsy site where they could buy the photobook. In this way the Send dialog generates traffic and sales without forcing users to share a link with all their friends that might lead to private photos.

By providing more ways for developers to access the microsharing functionality of the Send button, Facebook may be able to drive more traffic to niche and private content without filling the news feed with stories that are irrelevant or not suitable for all of a user’s friends.

Third-party social web browser developer RockMelt announced today that it has established a long-term partnership with Facebook’s engineering and design teams to build the newly released RockMelt Beta 3 and future products. Along with an improved Chat and integrated Notifications, Requests, and Messages experience, Facebook.com appears differently when browsed through the new version of RockMelt, with elements including Chat and alerts hidden from view since they appear in the browser.

The partnership with the 40-employee RockMelt will allow Facebook to guide the development of a web browser without expending nearly as many resources as would have taken to release one itself. It could also lend legitimacy to RockMelt, which says it has only had 1 million people try its product to date, though its few hundred thousand active users log an average of 6.5 hours a day on the product.

Six months ago RockMelt launched the private beta of its social web browser, designed to pull frequently used parts of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs inside the browser chrome. Beta2 saw the addition of multi-friend Chat support, further updates allow it to pull in data from YouTube and RSS, and the public beta launched 10 weeks ago.

User adoption of the Andressen-Horowitz-backed project or other social browsers such as Wowd has yet to explode. Still, founders Eric Vishria and Tim Howes are optimistic. “Over 500 million people have switched browsers in the last three years,” they told us. “81% of our users are 34 or younger. For those in the social generation, it just makes sense. Conversion rates and retention are high. They just get it.”

A deeper integration with Facebook offering unique value could kickstart growth.”There’s no way this release would happen without them,” Vishria and Howes told us. “We’re interacting with them five times a day to get this done.” Though Facebook is hiring for a Seattle-based desktop software team, RockMelt said it was working with a Palo Alto team from Facebook headquarters. This may support our prediction that Facebook’s desktop team isn’t building a browser, but instead software such as media usage scrobbling widgets that will help users share their music listening and video watching habits.

RockMelt Beta3′s New Features

Downloadable starting at 10am PST today, RockMelt Beta3 features several new features that allow browser chrome customization and streamline social experiences. Users can now swap the dock-like App Edge and the buddy list-esque Friend Edge between the left and right rails of the browser. The Friend Edge can be clicked to expand and show the names of friends instead of just their profile pictures, which can be hard to identify.

When a friend in the Friend Edge is clicked, it starts a Facebook Chat with them that automatically imports your Chat history. RockMelt Beta3 works with Facebook’s unified messaging product to seamlessly switch from Messages to Chat if a friend is online. A user’s Notifications, Requests, and Messages all appear in the top center of the chrome with counters denoting new activity.

Perhaps most interesting though is what Facebook’s team has done to change Facebook.com when visited through RockMelt. Rather than appear redundant, a user’s Chat buddy list and alerts don’t appear on the site, only in the browser. Clicking within Facebook to initiate a Chat opens the Chat in RockMelt instead, so users can carry on the conversation even as they browse other sites.

Outsourcing the Facebook Browser

Vishria and Howes tell us RockMelt Beta3 is “the beginning of what the modern browser looks like”. They say there’s many more social features to build out as part of the Facebook partnership, including “creating an unbelievable photo experience, Places, Like integrations — we’re constantly brainstorming and collaborating.” The companies may have been connected by Marc Andressen, both a Facebook board member and a core RockMelt investor who believes RockMelt could be the fifth browser to reach over 100 million users.

RockMelt’s 40-person engineering and design-focused team builds on Google’s Chromium open source browser which has 200 devs, which is turn built on WebKit that has its own army of open source devs. Without an overwhelming user demand for social browsers, developing one internally could be a strategic misstep for Facebook, but working with RockMelt might accomplish similar goals much more efficiently. This way, Facebook can work on more crucial or unexpected projects while still keeping its small size and startup culture.

The latest Platform Update to the Facebook Developers Blog on Friday announced the new ability to subscribe to threads in the Comments Box social plugin, the addition of Like Story feedback to the Insights tool, and details on API access to metrics on Send button activity.

Facebook also released several developer tutorials this week, including “How-To: Handle Expired Access Tokens“, and “How-To: Use The Graph API to Upload Photos to a User’s Profile“, and is seeking feedback from developers on the tutorial template.

The company released the updated version of the Comments Box social plugin for third-party websites in March, but has now added “Subscribe” buttons to each comment thread. In addition to the original author of a thread, those who click the button will receive Facebook notifications of new comments in that thread so they don’t miss something interesting. Users can also click to unsubscribe if a thread gets off topic later.

Facebook tested an unsubscribe button for news feed threads in August 2010, but decided not to roll it out. Now the two systems contrast, with a reply to a news feed story subscribing one to notifications about future comments, while users have to actively subscribe in the Comments Box and have the option to reply without being subscribed.

The new feature will enhance the utility of the plugin, especially for more technical sites such as the Facebook Developers Blog, where comments can carry crucial information. Though there aren’t options to subscribe via email or RSS, this update helps to close the functionality gap between Facebook’s comments plugin and popular third-party plugins such as Disqus and IntenseDebate.

The Facebook Insights tool for developers now includes analytics regarding feedback to stories published to the news feed when users click Like buttons on third-party websites. The data includes:

• Like Story Impressions
• Like Story Likes
• Like Story Like Rate
• Like Story Comments
• Like Story Comment Rate

When combined with existing metrics on Like Story click through rate, this data can help developers determine if the open graph meta tags they’re added to their website are generating compelling Like stories. They can then change things such as the image, headline, and descriptive copy that are included in the story and test to see if performance improves. For instance, a high Like rate compared to the comment rate might indicate that the posts are enjoyable and easy to consume, but might not include strong enough calls to action or questions.

Facebook launched the Send button on April 25th, and by March 7th over 25,000 sites had integrated it. Now developers can access metrics about the performance of their Send buttons via the Graph API and Insights FQL table. Aggregated by domain, developers can see Send button views and clicks, and views and clicks of inbox Messages sent through the Send button by day or over the domain’s lifetime. This data can help developers determine the optimal placement of their Send buttons and the most compelling content for the button to deliver.

When users include a personal message with a friend request, that message will now also appear in the Messages inbox of the recipient. Previously, these messages, which allow users to add context to a friend request, only appeared in the Requests channel. This made them easy to miss, especially since once a request was answered, the message was permanently deleted.

By syndicating these friend request personal messages to the Messages inbox, users are much more likely to see them and users will always have a copy, significantly reducing the likelihood of these sometimes important messages being lost.

Since the early days of the site, when users sent a Facebook friend request from the web version of the service, they could click a link in the request confirmation prompt to add a personal message. This could be used to inform the recipient of where they and the sender met, reference a mutual friend, or start a conversation. They weren’t shown in the Messages inbox, and weren’t visible in some native Facebook mobile apps, such as Facebook for iPhone.

Unfortunately, due to their lack of visibility and the fact that they were deleted when a request was answered, they could go unseen, leading the sender to assume the recipient was ignoring them. For example, let’s say two people met at a party and one sent the other a friend request accompanied by a personal message asking them on a date. If the recipient confirmed the request but didn’t see the message and therefore didn’t respond, the sender might think the recipient didn’t want to go on the date.

Now when users receive a friend request that includes a personal message, they’ll see red counters on both their Friend Requests and Messages channels in Facebook’s top navigation bar. They can view the personal message in either channel, and the Message inbox copy won’t be deleted if they answer the friend request.

This functionality change makes the friend request personal message much more useful, especially for those sending requests to people they don’t know as well, such as people they’ve met through social games. It will decrease the likelihood of legitimate friend requests being marked as spam, which can temporarily suspend a sender’s ability to send additional requests. It will also encourage users to accompany friend requests with conversation starters that can strengthen casual friendships and lead to more interaction on Facebook.

With this change to friend requests, the Download Your Information tool, and Facebook Chat exchanges being saved thanks to last year’s the upgrade to Messages, everything users write on Facebook will now be archived somewhere.