Facebook's New Features

Facebook's under going a self titled "launch season" with site changes in terms of features and content delivery happening all the time. Last week their popular smart phone app was updated to include the new version of the News Feed. Facebook's privacy settings also enjoyed a refresh, prompting the inevitable backlash as they always seems to be too disjointed and complicated for most users.

Interestingly one of the new improvements comes from a combination of privacy settings and content delivery. Many Facebook users have hundreds of friends and many of these peoples "I've had a bad day" status aren't really worth your time. Their new lists include a Close Friends list, so if one of your best mates posts, "I'm off to the pub tonight, if you fancy it, join me!" Facebook will bring this right to the top of your news feed (add a small blue triangle), so you will never miss a trick in your close circle of friends. Wait, did I just say close 'circle' of friends? Well yes... and now that I mention it it sounds exactly like Google+'s Circles feature. As imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, Google+'s engineers should be very flattered!! In addition to receiving statuses from your close friends first the activity feed will be live, just like Twitter, so you won't be waiting for updates or refreshing your profile page to check for new content.

Other new features include more integration with third party companies, such as Spotify, to put Facebook at the centre of your online social life, as if it isn't already! To compete with Twitter and Google+ all the tagging and location tagging features of these other services have been recreated too (they are spookily similar).

In a few weeks users will get a whole new profile experience: Timeline. Facebook explains all on their blog: Timeline on Facebook's Blog.

Image: Facebook