Ticker, the real-time activity feed Facebook launched in 2011, is being pretty much retired in the latest redesign of News Feed and replaced by separate feeds that users can choose from.

A small remnant of the feature remains in the bottom left corner of the site, where Facebook displays one recent item at a time, almost camouflaged within the bookmarks/chat sidebar. The stories would be almost unnoticeable, except that they refresh whenever there is new activity, typically every few minutes, but sometimes within seconds. It’s unclear how much this contributes to the user experience, but Facebook could remove or tweak the feature based on how much engagement it generates. Users can hide this by clicking the gear icon.

(more…)

Among the changes Facebook announced today regarding News Feed were a number of improvements for app developers, including larger feed stories, an updated games feed and app bookmarks that are visible from any page users navigate to.

The most obvious component of the redesign is how much bigger stories and photos appear in the feed. The example below is full size.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

Facebook is experimenting with reduced image sizes for some page post ads that appear in the desktop News Feed, a spokesperson confirms.

Ads that do not include social context — meaning the user does not have a friend connected to the page being advertised — now include smaller photos and video thumbnails. Page post ads that include social context have full-size visuals.

The social network is “testing different sizes based on connectedness,” the spokesperson says.

(more…)

Page Post Ads in the Facebook News Feed generate 14 percent higher return on investment for companies in the retail sector compared to Marketplace ads in the sidebar, a study from Nanigans has found.

Several other studies have shown the strength of News Feed ads over those in the sidebar, but those studies have often compared Sponsored Stories, which are ads that can only be shown to the friends of users who have connected with the advertiser and they must lead to a destination within Facebook. With its latest study, Nanigans looked at ads leading off-site in formats that could be targeted to any user, regardless of social connections.

Page Post Ads are ads that began as posts on a company’s Facebook page. In this case, the posts were photos that included a link to the retailer’s site in the caption. These can appear within the feed on desktop and mobile. Marketplace ads are the traditional ads in the desktop sidebar, which include a headline, body copy and small image. Note that the examples below are not necessarily Nanigans clients, they’re just used to illustrate the different ad types.

(more…)

Some Facebook users are seeing a new “recent articles” module that highlights news stories related to a page that a user has Liked.

A Facebook spokesperson tells us, “This unit is a test of a new kind of News Feed story that makes it easier to find content that you might be interested in.”

The unit pulls from a range of sources and includes popular links that are being shared on the social network. The articles do not have to be from social reader applications and they do not have to have been posted by a page the user is connected to. Instead it lets users know about articles they might not have seen already but would be interested in based on their page Likes.

The module is similar to the “most shared articles” feature we found Facebook testing last month. That unit suggests popular articles from news sources that users have Liked.

Facebook has a “trending articles” module in News Feed, which displays activity from Open Graph news reader apps and is not related to Facebook pages that users Like. On fan pages, users can see a list of top related news stories based on Open Graph activity, but that also looks at stories from all time rather than focusing on recent news like the latest News Feed unit does.

As we’ve written about recently, News Feed has traditionally been a place to see stories and activities from friends and pages users have explicitly connected to, but Facebook seems to be experimenting with using Open Graph data and other cues to generate new types of stories. For example, we’ve seen the social network testing “upcoming events,” “upcoming concerts” and “recently released albums” units in the feed. These look beyond the social connections a user has and takes into consideration their interests. We’ve heard complaints from some users who say they don’t want to see items in News Feed that aren’t from friends, but if Facebook can offer relevant recommendations, other users may find these modules useful.

Page owners, however, may not appreciate that they have no control over the unit, which in some situations could show negative articles about their brand.

Thanks to Tom Waddington for the tip and the screenshot.

Some Facebook users are seeing a “Most Shared On” module in News Feed that highlights popular links from news sources they Like.

The module, which began appearing some time in the past few weeks, is a new way for news pages to get their content seen in the feed.

“We’re introducing new kinds of News Feed stories that make it easier to find content that you might be interested in,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an email. “The ‘Most Shared On’ stories appearing in News Feed show the most frequently shared links from a page you have Liked. E.g. If I have liked Inside Facebook’s page, I may see a News Feed item that lets me know the ‘most shared’ links from Inside Facebook that day.”

Users who Like news outlets on Facebook will see a link in their feed under the “Most Shared On” title, with an option to view more stories. The module does not include captions that the page might have included in its original Facebook post, and in fact, some of the links might be to articles that the page has not already shared in a post. The module considers all content from the domain.
(more…)

Facebook appears to be testing a new design for its ad unit that developers use to promote their iOS and Android apps within Facebook’s mobile News Feed, according to a screenshot by ESPN’s SVP of Product Development Ryan Spoon.

The latest iteration of the ad unit is larger and includes the “Install Now” call to action. Rather than using the app’s logo, the unit uses an app’s header image from App Center. The ad now also includes an app’s star rating.

Facebook introduced ads for mobile developers to drive traffic to a download page in the Apple App Store or Google Play in early August. The ads leverage the extensive targeting options of the Facebook platform, giving developers a way to reach a more specific audience than they could through other mobile ad networks. Another benefit is the placement directly within in News Feed.

These mobile ads are only available to a limited number of beta partners for now, but mobile developers can sign up to be part of the beta here. The ads are sold on a cost per click basis through a bid model, similar to Facebook’s other ads.

Previously, this ad unit was part of a “Try these apps” module, sometimes among organic recommendations. The ad featured an icon to indicate that tapping the link would lead users to their device’s native app store, but it’s likely that few users recognized this meaning. With the new “Install Now” language, users might be less surprised when they’re sent outside of Facebook.

Top image from Ryan Spoon.

When users click the Like or Recommend button on a third-party website or within a Facebook app, it now publishes a full news feed story instead of just a one-line Recent Activity story. Previously, full stories with headlines, thumbnail images, and captions were only published if the website chose to implement the “Like with Comment” version of the button and users chose to add this additional context.

As the Like button now encompasses the functionality of the Share button, which Facebook has removed from its documentation, Facebook may phase out the Share button entirely. The change gives more prominence to outbound links in the news feed and on a user’s wall, and so will increase referral traffic and draw more sites to add the Like button.

Full stories appear larger, more compelling since they often include an image, and are ranked better in the news feed than Recent Activity stories. Therefore, the stories generated from clicks of the Like / Recommend button will been seen by more of a user’s friends and drive more traffic to third-party websites and apps than before.

Since Facebook launched its social plugins including the Like button at last year’s f8 conference, over 2.5 million websites have integrated them. In July, Facebook introduced Like with Comment, allowing some implementation to publish full feed stories.

By August, 350,000 sites had Like buttons, and that count is probably much higher now. Facebook has since allowed developers to integrate Like buttons with social games and other Facebook apps, and is trying to increase third-party awareness of their ability to publish news feed stories to those who click their buttons.

Up until now, Facebook had supported three different ways to share third-party content to the news feed:

• The Share button –  When clicked, users see a Facebook Publisher dialog pop up allowing them to add a comment. It publishes a full feed story, similar to if the user had copied the link into the Publisher on Facebook.com. The Share button doesn’t subscribe users to future updates from the owner of the button.
• The Like / Recommend button without comment – When third-parties use the standard iframe Like button with a width less than 400 pixels, the button_count, or  box_count version of the Like / Recommend button, users aren’t given the option to comment. A simple, one-line story linking to the content is published to the Recent Activity feed of the user’s wall, and the story is less frequently displayed in the news feeds of friends. Users are subscribed to future updates from the button’s owner.
• The Like / Recommend button with comment – When third-parties implement the XFBML version or the standard iframe version with a width of 400 pixels or more, users are always given the option to comment. If they comment, a full story is published. If they don’t comment, a simple story is published. Users are subscribed to future updates from the button’s owner.

Now, all versions of the Like / Recommend button publish a full feed story, whether a comment is added or not. The change has been applied retroactively, so old Recent Activity feed simple stories from Likes now appear as full stories. One exception is Like buttons that don’t represent real world objects and instead use the Open Graph og:type tag “Article”. These Likes for things including news articles, video clips, and photos do not appear in a user’s profile nor can those who Like these Open Graph pages be published to in the future.

Likes allow third-parties to publish future updates to a user, and therefore drive more traffic and create more lifetime value than Shares. This value lures additional third parties to implement Facebook’s social plugins, so it’s in Facebook’s interest to shift everyone from Share buttons to Like buttons.

The Share button is often displayed amongst a set of other buttons for Twitter, Digg, bookmarking, and email, but Facebook would rather have its own real estate opposed to being lost amongst the competition. Now that Facebook has given the Like button almost a year to prove its worth, third-parties would probably implement a Like button if they could no longer use the Share button, granting Facebook this improved placement.

The phase out of the Share button is evident in Facebook’s documentation. The “Facebook Share” typeahead result  shown when searching for “Share” on the developers site directs to the Like button documentation page.

One potential downside for users is if they participate in contests run by sites or apps that use Like buttons to tabulate votes. Some users might not want to publish a full feed story for each vote, and would have to delete the posts one by one after they’re published.

Overall, the change will benefit users, third-parties, and Facebook. Compelling Liked content from around the web will appear in the news feed more frequently, initiating discussions between friends. Third-parties will gain traffic from new users, inspiring more to implement Facebook’s social plugins.

This increased presence across the internet will spread awareness of Facebook, raise barriers for its competitors, and seed a client base for a potentially monetizable plugin, such as an Open Graph ad unit.

[Thanks to Amit Lavi and Paula Ford for the tips]

Last week, Facebook changed the options in its news feed settings so users either “Show posts from: friends and Pages you interact with the most” or from “all of your friends and Pages.” Some users have unknowingly been defaulted to the first option, causing lot of content to be hidden from them without their knowledge.

It’s not exactly clear what determines which default users receive, though newer accounts appear more likely to only be seeing content from a subset of friends. Previously users could select exactly how many of their friends they saw posts from.

Users can manually configure this setting by scrolling to the very bottom of their news feed and clicking the “Edit Options” link. This brings up the “Edit Your News Feed Settings” window where users can select from the two “Show posts from” options. They can also manage the list of  friends, Pages, and applications they’ve hidden from their news feed by clicking the ‘x’ button next to one of their posts and choosing to “Hide all by [author]“.

Facebook’s news feed settings have become much simpler over the past few years. In 2007, users could manipulate sliders for each type of story to control how often they appeared. In 2008, users could increase or decrease prominence of specific friends in-line from the news feed. Before the current interface, users defaulted to seeing posts from their 250 closest friends unless they increased the maximum.

The reduction in granularity of control contrasts with the increasing granularity available in Facebook’s privacy settings. Facebook may have decided that setting a specific number of friends to see was too arbitrary.

When making the decision of whether to see posts from all or only some friends and Pages, users should think about how often they skim past uninteresting updates in their feed. If its only a few especially noisy friends that are cluttering their feed, they should just hide those users. If they are frequently bored or think there’s too much to read, they should select to only see a subset.

However, if users want the most comprehensive news feed possible, they should go into their settings and ensure that they’re seeing posts from all friends and Pages.

[Thanks to Kellie Mairs for the tip.]