Facebook is rolling out a new Groups section of Timeline today to allow users to share and highlight the groups that they’re a part of, a company spokesperson tells us.
With the latest Timeline redesign, Facebook overhauled the About page so that it’s one long page with different content-specific sections. Users have more options to show off their favorite movies, books and music, as well as their fitness activity and other stories they’ve shared through Open Graph apps. Users can also pick which sections appear on their profile and the order in which they appear.
The new Groups section will only display “open groups” that users have joined. If a user was added or invited to a group but didn’t accept, it will not appear on the person’s Timeline. Closed or private groups will also be hidden. The point is to highlight the groups that users might represent part of their identity and to help their friends find groups that they might be interested in joining.
Since the new Timeline began rolling out, Facebook has also added a Games section and hidden the Events section while it addresses a bug.
With the new Timeline, Facebook users can share richer stories about the books, movies, TV shows and music in their lives.
The social network is beginning to get to the vision it set out at the expansion of Open Graph in 2011. Users don’t have to Like a book, they can read it. Similarly, they can watch a movie or listen to an artist. The latest profile redesign helps users list what they’ve read, watched or listened to, but also what they want to read, watch and listen to.
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen a number of new ways Facebook is helping users fill out these sections of their About page, including through desktop News Feed stories and Timeline modules. Now we’ve seen options on mobile, too. In the past, it hasn’t been very easy for users to update their profiles from mobile besides Liking things in the feed. Now, it’s easier to add a range of new information just by browsing News Feed and tapping a few buttons.
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As Facebook rolls out its new Timeline design, some users have noticed that there’s no longer a way to display events they’re attending or view the events their friends have RSVP’d to. A Facebook engineer says this is a bug and the company is working on a fix.
In the old layout, users could access an events tab similar to what is currently available on business and fan pages. With the redesign, which only applies to user profiles, tabs have a new look and several new ones have been added for movies, books, fitness and apps. Events were part of this when the company initially launched the new design, but at some point in the past two weeks it stopped working.
Facebook product engineer Bob Baldwin answered a question on Reddit today about the issue. He said there is a bug that events lead Ed Maia is working to fix before re-enabling the module.
[Update: Privacy advocacy group Europe-v-Facebook.org explains that when the events module first rolled out, it revealed a user's past public events, which had not been previously available to a user's friends or other users from Timeline. The group says it notified Facebook of this issue. It is unclear whether the events bug Baldwin mentioned is related.]
Screenshot from Matt Navarra.
As the new Timeline and News Feed rolls out to more users, Facebook is providing more ways for users to share stories about the books, movies, TV shows and music in their lives. This week we found ways for users to add movies to their “watched” or “want to watch” lists directly from News Feed. Users can also do the same for other content they find on friends’ profiles.
For example, when users see stories in News Feed about items friends have added to their Timeline, they can click a plus button in the corner of the item and select a list to add it to and who to share it with. This became available for music stories last week, and this week we saw it become part of movie-related stories, such as the one below.
These features encourage users to connect with more pages, which ultimately improves the social network’s ad targeting, search results, News Feed relevance and recommendations.
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Facebook is adding a new section to users’ About pages on their Timeline that showcases the social games they play.
The games section is similar to the movies, books, TV and music sections launched with the latest profile redesign earlier this month. It displays the games users have recently played and all those that they’ve Liked. Users can customize the order of their About page to feature games more prominently near the top or hide it completely.
However, unlike those other sections for entertainment, the games section does not include a list of games users “want to play.”
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Facebook has added a “Listen Later” button to Open Graph music stories in the feed, allowing users to fill out a new section of their About page.
The feature becomes available when users hover over a story about friend’s listening activity on Facebook-connected services like Spotify or Rdio. Users can click the small plus sign, which will bring up the “Listen Later” option and a way to adjust the privacy settings of the story. We have not seen examples of “Read Later” or “Watch Later” buttons in the feed, but these could be coming or already in testing, considering that the new About page also includes “Want to Watch” and “Want to Read” sections.
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Although Facebook publicly announced a new Timeline layout last week with posts in a single column on the right and customizable modules to the left, some users are seeing another design, which is more of a hybrid of the new and old Timeline.
Blink VP Planning and Media Eti Suruzon says her profile was updated Wednesday, but it doesn’t look like the version Facebook has launched to others. The cover photo design and navigation bar beneath it are the same as what the social network debuted last week, but the posts continue to appear in a two-column layout as they were previously.
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Facebook will further roll out a commenting system that it has been testing, which includes threaded conversations and a ranking algorithm meant to put the most relevant and high quality comments first, a spokesperson tells us.
The new comments for pages and users who have enabled “follow,” have been in testing since November, and starting next week will be available on an opt-in basis for all accounts with more than 10,000 fans or followers.
Key features of the new comments are the option to reply to a specific comment and a ranking system that takes into account positive signals, such as likes and comments; negative signals, such as not getting much engagement; and connections, meaning the ranking is personalized for each user so that, for example, comments from people they might know appear first.
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Facebook today announced a wide rollout of a Timeline redesign some users got access to last month.
The new layout puts a user’s posts and life events on the right, and their About info and app activity on the left. This reduces the need for users to look back and forth between two columns to read posts on their page. The About page now gives users more options to show off their favorite movies, books and music, as well as their fitness activity and other stories they’ve shared through Open Graph apps.
No change is being made to business or fan pages today.
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Facebook has begun rolling out an updated design for the user About page on their Timeline, which now gives users more options to customize their page and features larger visuals and more integration of Open Graph apps.
Reader Matt Navarra says today he was prompted with a pop-up on his profile that said, ”Add things you care about to your all-new About page.” The new page is appearing for users with the latest design for Timeline, which includes some users in the U.K. and New Zealand. These users can now choose which apps and content types appear on the page and choose the order in which they appear by using the edit icon in the corner. Users have one long page that they and friends can scroll through or jump to specific sections by clicking on titles in the bar across the top of the page.
Sections for Open Graph apps summarize user activity in a Pinterest-like format similar to how these items appear in News Feed. Sections for movies, books, music and other content include new “Want to Watch/Read/Listen” lists.
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