Microsoft announced the release of a new version of Facebook for Windows Phone. The new version, 2.3, is now available from Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace. You can also update the app through the Marketplace on your phone.
The update includes improved design and support for several new Facebook features. There’s Pages view, the ability to access Groups, and see the Likes on any posts or photos, as well as the ability to apply filter to your News Feed. All your requests, messages, and notifications sits at the top of the main interface.
A refined toolbar at the bottom provides quick access to Check in, Add (post, or add/take a new photo.)
“Test out your groups. Visit your pages. Look at who like your posts. Change the banner image. Check out the improved news feed performance. Use the new filters. Explore the improved navigation,” Microsoft said on said..
There is no full Timeline support though. Hopefully, we will see a full integration of the feature in the next update.
There are about 1.4 million active users of the Facebook app for Windows Phone, according to the Next Web.
If you use Facebook app for Windows Phone, do share your thoughts on this updated version.
Facebook has begun rolling out update for its photo viewer that displays comments and ads on the right side of the photo.
The new photo viewer looks very much like the one Google+ currently offers, and some are saying it’s a rip off Google+.
Up till now, comments and ads were shown beneath photos. The new update brings the comments on the right side of the photo, followed by ads. The ads are pushed down as comments on the photo grows. The option for “tagging” and adding “location” appears on the top of the right hand section whenever applicable.
It looks like this updated photo viewer has been rolled out to large number of Facebook users.
Do you have it yet?
Lately, Facebook users has a reason more to officially rejoice since the company has increase the status update limit to 63,206 characters, apparently 400 times more than Twitter.
Facebook has keep increasing its limit. Originally, the limit was restricted to 160 characters. Later in March 2009, the company increase the limit to 420 characters. But in 2011, Facebook has increased the character limit three times. By July 2011, the limit was pumped up to 500 characters and within a couple of months to 5,000 characters in September and now has been boosted by over 10 times.
Bob Baldwin, the software engineer who set the new number, wrote on his Facebook wall “I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206 
”.
The company explains that the average novel has roughly 500,000 characters. This could be shared in nine posts by the users.
Twitter as of now has been built around the infamous short, 140-character, however the limit of Google+ appears to be 100,000. We wonder if Facebook will overcome Google+ character limit but if so do,hopefully with reasons.
Two of the biggest updates announced during the F8 were Facebook Timeline and Open Graph.
With Facebook’s new API extension Open Graph, after a user adds an app to their Timeline, app specific actions are shared on Facebook via Open Graph through Facebook Timeline, News Feed, and Ticker, making the app an integral part of the user’s and their friend’s experience on Facebook.
Moreover, Facebook’s Timeline, as you can see is far more a detailed log of your online life than its predecessor, the Profile. Facebook aims to help users express themselves more with it. But, its default option allows the public and all your friends to view your posts dating back to when you first signed up for Facebook, which is a scary thought.
Many of you might not have had your Facebook’s account updated yet, but make sure that you take time to review and make use of the privacy options offered by Facebook. So far, Open Graph apps allow users to opt out of publishing information to Facebook news feeds, and the Timeline will give users a five-day period to choose what they want to show before the new profile publishes.
Here is an infographic from ZoneAlarm that raises some red flags regarding timeline and open graph.
Let us know your thought on the six points raise in the inforgraphics above.
Facebook has done it again. The world’s largest online social network has tweaked the home pages of its 750+ million users.
The change that came on Wednesday filled users homepage with newsfeeds that Facebook calls “top stories” followed by “recent stories”. If that is not all, there’s something called a “ticker,” a live feed of all the ongoing activity that also appears in users’ news feeds, leaving many users outraged. It was literally impossible to move the mouse around without calling out a pop-up. By mid-morning, “new facebook” became one of the most discussed topic on Twitter, with majority of the comments being negative.
With 750+ million users, it sure is difficult to please everyone. But, if you are one of those who hate the new-look of Facebook or is worried about its real-time news ticker violating your privacy, then you are not alone.
On top of the recent changes, we should brace ourselves for more updates and features that will be launched at the ongoing F8 conference. Till then, share your views on the new look of Facebook’s news feed.
Facebook announce a number of new features to its recently-launched Comment Plugin to mark the milestone of its presence on more than 50,000 websites.
The features added to the Facebook commenting platform include increased size for comments in the news feed that is expected to increase conversion from news feed exposure.
Another new feature is the addition of Hotmail integration. Facebook users can now log in via their Hotmail account.
Last but not the least, an important addition for webmasters is the new comments API, that provides the ability mine comment data, export, and search comments to identify active visitors or most active conversations.
Facebook will automatically upgrade all sites to the new version of the comments plugin on April 29th. However, those wanting to upgrade now can do so by adding the ‘migrated=1‘ parameter to their existing <fb:comments> tag.
More about the features and can be found at Facebook developers page.
Over the last summer, Facebook began testing the Questions feature with a small group of users, and will be rolling out the feature to everyone.
We all have the internet at our hands where we can all research and find answers to our questions, but there is always this obvious fact – long and arduous search sometimes, landing on pages where the provided information might not be correct, or a highly rated product might just not click with you just because the person who wrote the review might be biased or simply the taste between the two of you may be different.
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With Facebook Questions feature, all you have to do is put up a question out there and get help from more than 600 million users around the world. On top of that, your friends who know your tastes well will be able to easily help you out with their precious insights and recommendations.
With the updated Questions feature, users can also answer by voting on existing answer, so you also get to see the most popular answers/opinions too. The questions are public in nature and all the answers are listed on the same page. But, every user will get a personalized view of the responses, ranked by what their friends voted on.
The new Questions feature is available as a limited public beta first, but you can opt for it if you are interested. Follow this link to try out the Question feature now.
Share with us your opinions on this new feature.
Facebook announced that it will be rolling out the new Facebook messaging system to all users.
Launched last November, it set the media abuzz, with many expecting it to be a “Gmail Killer” and something that would render traditional e-mail obsolete.
The new messaging system, as we all know, will treat all communications between people as a part of an ongoing conversation supported over a variety of devices.
Facebook is surely taking a long time to roll-out the feature worldwide. Ben Parr reports at Mashable that there are more than 4 billion messages sent by Facebook users daily and how Facebook is taking its time with the update to make sure it’s right.
The timing couldn’t have been better to make a great impact and gain acceptance, especially among teenagers, whose usage of email plunged 59 percent in a year according to ComScore.
Facebook announce in its blog, “We’ve begun expanding the rollout of the new Messages to everyone. Look out for it over the next few weeks if you’re not yet using it.”
You can go ahead and learn more about the new messaging system here.
Is the new messaging system available to you? Share you thoughts with us.
Facebook has unveiled sponsored stories, a new ad format that turns your friends’ and your activities like page updates, Places checkins, Likes, and application activities into promoted contents.
Partners for the new ad format include Starbucks, Coca-cola, Levi’s, Anheuser-Busch, RED and UNICEF.
“It is a way for marketers to sponsor activities that happen throughout the News Feed,” Facebook Product Marketing Lead Jim Squires told Mashable.
For example, taking the newsfeed below,
It will be turned into a sponsored story like the one below.
Sponsored stories will be highlighted as one, and will run along the right hand side of a user’s profile.
Users will also be able to adjust their Privacy settings to prevent updates from appearing as Sponsored stories.
[Image source: Financial Post]
Facebook has introduced some changes to the Facebook profile recently. Here is a quick peek of the changes.
The profile page starts with a summary of your profile info like relationship status, where you are from, your work and education info etc. Few additions in the profile info include Languages You Speak, Sports and the friends you play with etc.
The profile info summary is followed by a row of photos in which you have been tagged. The next section is allotted to content sharing – Status, Photos, link and Video. The rest of the centre section of the profile page is dedicated to newsfeed.
You will also find few changes in the “Friends” section. You can now select and show your favorites – family, best friend/s, or teammates. You can also feature existing friends list.
While visiting friend’s profile, you will be able to view your entire “Friendship” through the friendship link featured at the top-right hand section of their profile page.
Overall, the new profile layout is cool and easier to express yourself better. Similarly, it is easier to learn more about friends without having to click through different sections of their profile information.
If you haven’t got the new profile yet, please click through the link below to get your profile updated.
(Get the new Profile)
Facebook Updates Comment Plugin With New Features
April 13, 2011
Facebook announce a number of new features to its recently-launched Comment Plugin to mark the milestone of its presence on more than 50,000 websites.
The features added to the Facebook commenting platform include increased size for comments in the news feed that is expected to increase conversion from news feed exposure.
Another new feature is the addition of Hotmail integration. Facebook users can now log in via their Hotmail account.
Last but not the least, an important addition for webmasters is the new comments API, that provides the ability mine comment data, export, and search comments to identify active visitors or most active conversations.
Facebook will automatically upgrade all sites to the new version of the comments plugin on April 29th. However, those wanting to upgrade now can do so by adding the ‘migrated=1‘ parameter to their existing <fb:comments> tag.
More about the features and can be found at Facebook developers page.
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