After the second major “upgrade” to the FaceBook system in about a year, FB has many users wondering what’s next and how far off it is.
FB has always been its own social network. The main source of FB’s likability was the simple AJAX driven user interface. FB unveiled their New Facebook recently which sported a bit more of the “feed” aspect. In the past two weeks, FaceBook has gone all out making it out to be a sort of closed network iGoogle/NetVibes/Twitter service. User profiles sport the status updates of themselves and friends much like twitter. The sidebars are filled with application feeds and other networking feeds from different FB activities. (Hence the iGoogle-ish aspect.)
Truthfully, the people I see benefiting from the FB upgrade are PPC marketers and other advertisers. Because the different feeds for the different networking functions (other than the status feed) are shown in the side margins, they allow the advertisers to better mask and integrate the ads into the site, thus making them more clickable, thus making FB and the advertisers more money. Now, I am sure if you were to ask FB upfront – this would not be mentioned as the driving reason behind the upgrade. I don’t think it was, but I do think it was definetely a sizable point of consideration. With other networks (uhmm…MySpace.com) remaining fairly stagnant with ad revenues, the pressure is on to innovate and create better and more effective streams of revenue. FB seems to have responded to the pressure well, letting the other networks know that they aren’t messing around.
Game On FB.
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