In Colorado, we have a saying that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change. With social media, it seems like there’s something new every five days!
Facebook has been making major changes recently, with more to come. I wanted to talk about a couple of the bigger ones. They’ve added a ticker, where you can see all of your Friends’ activities, in real time. If you hover over a specific item in the ticker, the full “story” opens and you can comment if you wish. It’s continually updating, so if someone comments on an old posts, it will appear in the ticker again.
Most Recent and Top News have also changed in Facebook. There’s now just one News Feed, with Top News listed first. Scroll down to see Recent News. Facebook determines which stories it considers “top news” based on factors including your relationship to the person who originally posted, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, and so on.
If it’s been a while since you’ve checked your Facebook, then Top News stories show first. If you check Facebook more often, you’ll see the Most Recent stories first.
If you think you’re missing status updates from people, you may be! Since the last change, the default is that Facebook now shows Most Updates from your Friends. There are three options: All Updates, Most Updates and Only Important. You can easily change the default to see more (or less) for each Friend.
One of the biggest changes is yet to come: Timeline, which will dramatically expand the amount of information you can post on Facebook and how others see it. At this time, it’s still optional to switch your Profile to Timeline, but all Profiles will change soon.
Personally, I really like one of the new social media sites: Google+. Initially launched in July 2011 and open by invitation only, it’s Google’s third foray into social media. By the end of September, the site had over 44 million users and opened to anyone with a gmail account. I don’t think G+ is trying to go head-to-head against Facebook, but it will be interesting what happens when it launches its Business Profiles. An organization’s search engine optimization (SEO) could be dramatically affected.
LinkedIn and Twitter have made changes over time, but nothing major. Twitter changed how profiles looked and added Promoted Tweets (ads) and LinkedIn has added several new features that add more functionality. However, both have avoided making changes as far-reaching as those by Facebook.
The one thing that remains constant is the fact that the sites will change! Sometimes it’s a bumpy ride and sometimes we totally embrace what’s new. I think it’s part of what makes it fun and exciting to use the sites.
What do you think about all the changes? Post your comments below!
Thank you for keeping us posted with all of these social media changes. I have to admit I do like the changes that Facebook implemented recently. I guess I might be the minority; since a lot of people felt betrayed, etc. I find change to be a catalyst to make me more productive. I thank Facebook for doing that. Maybe that is the reason I really haven’t gotten into LinkedIn and Twitter. I feel as if the same old stuff with very limited characters. My two cents. 🙂
Like always a great post. I just love how you keep me up to date with social media.
Thanks! The ticker is growing on me…in fact, I’ve enlarged it! I find myself watching it more than my News Feed. Thinking I may like the new Timeline, too.