NEW FACEBOOK CHANGES

Well I know that everyone is talking about it but todays blog has got to be about the new Facebook changes.  It is all very new and 99% of people are complaining about the changes but then 99% of people also hate any form of change so it is not necessarily what people really think about the new version.  There will probably be more changes after the big Facebook meeting tomorrow as well.  It seems they rushed these latest changes through because of Google+ opening their doors to everyone yesterday.  I think we all need to sweat it out a bit and see how we get used to it before we really say that we hate all of it or certain bits of it.  The most complained about bit so far is the scrolling feed on the right.  I guess that will definitely annoy people, especially those with lots of friends, as it will be scrolling a lot more than if you only have a few friends on there. 

I must have been on at an experimental stage late at night a couple of weeks ago as I had that scrolling down the side of my screen and wondered what on earth it was.  The next day it wasn’t there any more.  I did mention it on my wall the next day but no-one said anything and I almost thought I had been dreaming.  But today there it is again, just like the other night.  I have a lot of US friends and that night when the US were busy posting the annoying thing was scrolling all the time and you could hardly even read it as it was moving so much – not that I was really reading it because I had no idea what it was at the time.

As I quite a newbie and haven’t been on any of the media / social networking / bookmarking sites before June this year I haven’t got so used to things being a certain way as most people, so can probably adapt to the new Facebook look easier than most.  I only realised this week that I had been on Google+ so early in the game.  I was invited to join some time in July and had no idea it had only been going for about a month.  I have gradually joined different sites as I have found out about them so all in all the whole thing is new to me including blogging.  I still haven’t got used to the way people Tweet – all RT’s and #, sales and quotations but not much “normal” talk – not that you can say much in 140 keystrokes anyway.  But is seems to be so busy saying nothing much at all in my stream.  I have so many Tweets going through that I just have to hope that if someone actually tries to contact me on it they will mention me in it or send me a direct message so that I actually definitely receive it.

Anyway, back to my original topic today.  I have already changed my view on the new Facebook after only half a day so I think I may well have settled into the new version by the end of the week.  We’ll see.  At the moment people in the UK can still revert back to the old version but as that will change at some point we may as well get used to it sooner rather than later.  We are probably lucky in that we can flick back and forth to test if we are actually missing what we would normally see.  But the way I see it is that we can basically see what we want in our Feed once we have synchronised it by changing what we want to see in our Top Stories etc.  It will take quite a few clicks to get things how we want but once done it will be fine.  The only risk we have is of not changing some details on someone who we like to see the posts from but who doesn’t post very often, so we will have to “catch” a post from them to be able to change their posts to Top Stories.  The other thing I can possibly see will be a bit of a problem is when we like to read a friends post but not necessarily comment on it which means  it then doesn’t rate very high to be shown, whereas a post from someone we don’t know so well that gets a lot of comments shoots to the top of our page.

I think it will cause a lot more of a problem to business users who rely on Facebook for selling as their posts wont really be seen, as few will comment on them so a lot less people will see them.  Time will tell on that one or if Facebook will come up with anything else for that – or will everyone move over to Google+ once they bring out business pages.

Todays trivia snippet:

Do you know that the words " race car " spelled backwards still spells "race car"?

Todays chuckle:

MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:
ATD -at the doctor.

BFF -best friend fell.

BTW -bring the wheelchair.

BYOT -bring your own teeth.

FWIW -forgot where I was.

GGPBL -gotta go, pacemaker battery low.

GHA -got heartburn again.

IMHO -is my hearing aid on?

LMDO -laughing my dentures out.

OMMR -on my massage recliner.

ROFLACGU -rolling on floor laughing and can't get up.

TTYL -talk to you louder!