Facebook has revealed several updates to its user interface during the past few weeks. Some of them good, and some of them not so good. The most notable new features or updates to the Facebook GUI include Timeline, Subscriptions, News Tickers, Smart Lists and revamped News Feeds.
The biggest and most prominent new feature will be the Timeline, which changes the look and feel of the user’s profile page. Facebook will be rolling out the new Timeline over the next few weeks, but here is a short video from Facebook’s YouTube channel highlighting its main features:
Facebook Timeline
Looks pretty nice, eh? Other updates to the new Facebook experience include:
Subscriptions
With the new Subscribe -button users have the opportunity to make their personal profiles more public. Users can now allow, or disallow their friends or subscribers see their public updates. Subscribe button is perfect for a more public person who wants to allow more connection with people other than just friends and family.
News Feed Ticker
News Feed Ticker shows all the actions performed by your friends, your Facebook Pages and your subscriptions. The real-time News Ticker pretty much shows what’s happening on your Facebook right now.
Lists
Facebook Lists is Facebook’s answer to Google Plus Circles. Users can create and use different lists to follow or track posts by designated friends, people and groups. To get you started Facebook will create automatically the following lists for you: Acquaintances, Friends, Work, School, Family and Your City.
News Feed
This is a minor upgrade to your existing News Feed and as such it might not be as relevant as the others. Top Stories and Recent Stories have now replaced Top News and Most Recent news. Top Stories are news snippets that Facebook thinks might be of interest to you, whereas Recent Stories is the chronological feed of your news.
These new features will be available to different users at different times during the next weeks. I will cover these in more details as they become more current.
Let me know if you are already using some of these new Facebook features and how you find them. Good or bad?
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.
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