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The Many Faces of Facebook

Facebook is a very popular social networking site that many of us use to stay in touch with our friends and family. A recent study found that the average U.S. user spends almost 8 hours per month on Facebook. That is equivalent to 15.5 minutes per day. You can tell that Facebook is pretty big thing, and it is going to get even bigger in the upcoming weeks. People spend a lot of time on Facebook, and they’re going to be spending even more time on it, as Facebook continues to upgrade its features to allow people to connect better with their family and friends.

Speaking of upgrades and all, how many of you remembered the News Feed update we had about a week ago? That had many people complaining. Many of us were pretty satisfied with the way the News Feed was organized before the update. You had your Top News and your Recent News. Top News allows you to see posts that may interest you the most, and Recent News allowed you to see new posts as they come. The upgrade that took place last week combined the two feeds into one single feed. Now, you can see your top news and your recent news all together, with top news section near the top of the page, and the recent news section below that. For many, this led to huge confusion and complication. How do you separate the top news with the recent news? What if you only want to see recent news? How do you ignore the top news?

The news feed wasn’t the only thing that changed last week. Facebook also added a “ticker” to the right side of the news feed. Basically, this ticker updates you on your friend’s activities as they happen. If your friend just commented on another one of your friend’s status, the ticker will inform you about it the instant your friend submits the comment. Personally, I see it as another “Recent News” feed, but without the lag that the previous “Recent News” feed had. Some of my friends even claimed that the ticker made stalking or “creeping” even easier, as people can see what their friends are doing and immediately respond afterwards.

These are just a few of the changes that Facebook has been rolling out for the past few weeks. Other changes include Smart Lists, which are very similar to the “Circles” seen on Google+ (sometimes called G+). You can categorize your friends based on networks or how often you communicate with them. While Facebook originally had a lists feature, it was very difficult to manage, and people did not want to spend so much time categorizing their friends into lists. So, Facebook created Smart Lists to help their users. I have used the feature for several weeks now, and I don’t have any problems it. At least I can see what is going on with all of my friends in my high school and college network.

However, Facebook is not finished yet. There is still one more feature that it is going to be released over the next few weeks. Facebook is going to update the user profile. Currently, the user profile acts just like any other news feed; it chronologically arranges your posts, starting with the most recent and moving backwards from there. While that is efficient for letting your friends see your recent activities, what if you want to access something you posted on Facebook two months ago? Well, you could just keep scrolling down as Facebook keeps loading your old feeds, but that is very time-consuming. The new update that Facebook is going to release is called Timeline. Timeline organizes your posts based on month and year. Your profile will basically be a timeline that will allow you to travel backwards and forwards. Want to see something you posted two months ago. Find that month, and Facebook will automatically produce the feeds you posted in that month. You no longer have to constantly scroll down and wait for Facebook to load your previous posts.

Many users, however, are not so hot about these changes. To be honest, I’m also not that happy about these changes. Many of us probably remember the Facebook way back in 2007, when it was just a simple social network site with no apps, games, or other trivial features. You want to talk to someone? Just post on their wall, and they will post back. Want to speak in private with your friends? Well, Facebook Messages has got you covered. And the news feed? Well, there were no top news back then. It was just a news feed that showed you recent activities. However, as the years progressed, Facebook continued to add new features. Some of these features turned out to be useful, such as comments and instant messaging. Others weren’t that great, but we eventually got used to it, as we either did not use it, or somehow tolerated it.

The same thing may occur with the recent changes. This funny comic summarizes our general attitude about Facebook changes. We generally start out being angry about these changes, but as time passes, we eventually get used to it. There are several reasons why. First, even if we do complain about the changes, there is nothing we can do about it. Second, even though we could move onto another social network, such as Google+, that is much cleaner in appearance and simpler to use, we will end up staying on Facebook, because so many of our friends and family are on it, and not everyone wants to go through the hassle of creating a new profile and adding their friends and family all over again. It is not logical, but conforming with everyone else by continuing to use Facebook gives us a lot more benefit than deviating and joining another network that not many people use. It’s all a matter of game theory and information cascades.

How do you feel about Facebook? Write down your thoughts and comments below!