Features that will change the way you use Facebook

An article by Amit Roushan    1 Comment

Things are changing and lately a lot for Facebook. For the past few days, every time I log-on to my Facebook account I see something or the other popping out.Every day or two, you get notifications about some new Facebook feature that has been recently added to the Facebook changing phenomenon.

As I expect more changes in the near future, here we try to look into some of those features that would (as Facebook says) enhance the way you use Facebook as the social networking tool to communicate with people round the globe. As Facebook says, these changes are there to show you more of what you want to see and less of what you don’t.

Subscribe Feature

With the Subscribe feature, Facebook wants you to organize your news feed your way. The use of Subscribe can be in different ways:

1. Choose what you see from people in News Feed

By now everything shared by your friend list is seen on your wall. But with this feature Facebook helps you to limit what you want to see and what you want to neglect for every single connection. You can choose one from the three options:

• All updates: Everything your friend posts
• Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
• Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move

This feature seems really cool and can come handy to those people who are irritated with their wall filled up by similar posts from the same people.

2. Subscribe people you find interesting

At this point, Facebook seems to be taking pointers from its rival Twitter. With the Subscribe button you can follow people who you find interesting even though they don’t know you. Just a click on Subscribe tab on the top right and you get all the updates. You can also share your updates with the public and get yourself subscribed. After Twitter its time you check how popular you are on Facebook.

The subscribe feature will definitely be helpful for organizing news feed. But the growing concern of privacy will definitely question, following and interacting with a person you don’t know. There are options like, once you allow subscribers, you can decide who can comment and what notifications you get. You’ll also see a Subscribers tab on your profile, where you can see who subscribes to you.

Improved Friend lists

Once again Facebook seems to be following Twitter with the Lists. Like Twitter, it’s worth to have lists on Facebook. Lists would help you see updates and interact with people from your lists only. This will definitely help to sort out all those unnecessary updates cluttered on your wall. With the lists, you are also able to share your updates with a specific set of people.
There are a number of default lists already available but then you can add your own or edit the one already present.

Ticker

The real time updates of your Facebook Friends. The ticker is present on the top right and is instantaneously updated with the activities of your Friends. If you see something interesting on Ticker, you can click on the ticker to see the full story and chime in by liking, commenting and all other stuffs in real time. Though the Ticker helps you get informed about your friends continuously the interface seems rather cluttered. Once again, the users might take some time to get used to with the Ticker.

Bigger Faster photos

With photos being shared most often, Facebook has finally come up with bigger photos (720 pixels to 960 pixels) with loading time twice as faster. People who are addicted to watch photos on Facebook might be thrilled but for me I will need some time to get adapted to the large photos on my wall as I am used to the smaller rather cuter version.

With the improvements, Facebook will certainly be more easier and versatile for social networking. But the number of changes that is happening in a very short period of time might leave facebook open to criticism. People are so addicted with the original Facebook layout that they may feel awkward to jump straight away to the newer version with so many changes.

I personally feel Facebook is trying hard to stay on top of the social networking game. My suggestions to Facebook would be to slow down. They should definitely bring changes but slowly giving users the time to accept the changes. But it seems there are more  to come as Facebook is to Launch “Major” Profile Redesign at f8 developer conference.

So, get ready for some more change.

Subscribe to fortystones.

Follow @fortystones on Twitter.

Get updated from our Facebook Fanpage.