First let’s go through a quick recap of what changes have been introduced by Facebook in its service, for readers to understand the implications for them in future.
Facebook has introduced a new subscribe button through which users may be able to follow even those people they are not friends with. They would now also be able to filter the information they receive from their current friends. The friends list would now be improved, which means users would be able to group their contacts into different lists.
Facebook has also introduced a new ticker which will appear on top of the chat box and will give a constant flow of users’ updates. Anything users read, watch or listen to, can be easily shared with their friends. Last but not least is the Timeline profile, which gives an easily accessible history of people’s life events.
What does it mean for users?
The new moves will encourage users to read, share and listen more on Facebook. All this information goes to the site which will help Facebook figure out patterns in user behaviour and better target their advertisements. Since all the reading, listening and watching activity will be shared automatically there will be a lot more noise for the users to go through than there earlier used to be.
The Facebook homepage looks a lot more like a newspaper. There is a clear attempt to present only relevant updates from friends and people who the users are following. The relevance of updates so far is slightly in question since many users say they are not getting the updates they would like to read.