Facebook’s new features may not be game changers on their own but the whole package is quite compelling.

If you took nothing else away from the f8 keynote, watching Mark Zuckerberg talk about social is like watching Steve Jobs talk about Apple: the pied-piper plays his tune and we can’t help but follow (pun intended). There is an ultimate confidence in what is being presented. That aside, a lot of what we have seen, or had hints of, is starting to make a lot of sense.

It is now obvious that Facebook have been working on their new functionality for a while – the changes are too complex to be a knee-jerk reaction to Google+. The timing of some features may have been altered in order to keep up with the release schedule of Plus but we had previously only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Open Graph

Facebook has been accused of copying the competition but the expansion of the Open Graph starts to account for a number of features that it had been assumed were just being stolen from Twitter or Google+. Subscriptions are not just about emulating the follower model of Twitter but about extending your graph as Facebook thrives off the patterns and connections.

Adding verbs to the Open Graph recognises that we don’t always want to “like” something as it may give the wrong impression. We need other ways to share and the read, listened, watched methods etc. make this possible – an intelligent move which may encourage us to share even more of our lives online.

Unlike original suspicions, the Ticker is not just a small duplicate of your news feed but a stream of everything you are connected to that you can dip in to at your leisure just as the casual Twitter user will dip in to their feed.

Facebook don’t listen to their users?

One of the biggest complaints about Facebook since the emergence of games and apps has been the updates they place in your news feed; if I understood correctly it looks as though these will finally be gone and instead show only in the Ticker. In Zuck’s own words there are things you might want to share but don’t want to annoy your friends with, or clog up their feed.

Separating the interesting from the banal is something we’ve all been wanting to do since we joined social networks and which is why 3rd party offerings such as my6sense and human curation have become increasingly popular. If the Ticker removes a lot of this banality from our main feed (but without removing it completely so we can’t complain that we didn’t get the chance to see it) is a great start.

Prior to f8 I had asked if Facebook was facing an identity crisis as initial reviews ranged between praising the service for becoming more social and trying to become a news network. I argued that some of the terminology in use such as “top stories” is disconnected from the more personal, emotional language normally employed but, having now seen the full impact of the latest changes, feel that Facebook wants us to realise that the main news feed is more serious. It has been called the news feed for a long time so the terminology is, at least, consistent with that.

The Ticker has been compared to Twitter and perhaps the speed at which it streams past means that short tweet-like comments will be reserved for there while longer comments are written in response to items on the main feed.

Other networks have reaped the benefit of in-depth conversations so if a lot of the “trash” is not in our feed we may feel inclined to interact with it more seriously.

Perhaps this will be how Facebook will encourage users to make use of the new 5000 character limit they are being given which will allow for more in depth posts and comments.

Patterns

Pattern recognition will show items in your feed that otherwise might have got missed. The example of a number of your friends all listening to the same artist at the same time is a case in point. Individually, these events might have passed you by but when a group of people all start doing the same thing at the same time then, just perhaps, it’s something you might want to check out.

It’s all very clear to me now. Dave Bowman, 2010

There is always a danger in making judgements before the event and the stories we read before f8 illustrate that we need to see the whole picture before passing comment.

The Open Graph is growing and it’s becoming very powerful.

The core of this post originally appeared on Google+ but has now been re-written.

Cross-posting between social networks has come in for much criticism; Facebook’s plans for users to post their public updates to Twitter re-opens the argument. The potential effects could be a blessing or a curse for the smaller network.

Not content with introducing a mixed friending environment with Subscriptions, Facebook is now aligning itself further towards the unilateral experience by promising cross-posting of public items to Twitter.

This functionality has previously been available for just Facebook Pages but, now that we have a follower model and everyone’s stream can effectively become a fan page, it would seem to make sense to bring the feature to our personal feeds.

At the flick of a switch Facebook has the potential to become by far the biggest Twitter client but is this a good thing for the smaller service or, indeed, for us?

Growth is key

Whether or not it is in response to the rise of Google+, Facebook is obviously keen to further extend it’s influence and keep growing.

By enabling public posts to be published to Twitter in this way Facebook greatly increases its exposure in what could be seen as a competing service and, as tweets are indexed by search engines, this exposure extends beyond the confines of Twitter. Ironically, this indexing also gives Google access (by the back door) to some Facebook content but whether it is useful remains to be seen.

The advantages for Facebook are instantly apparent but what does Twitter gain from this?

The most obvious benefit is content; millions of Facebook users could be pumping their updates into the service giving an instant boost to the number of tweets and depth of content.

Does the move mean Twitter could potentially gain millions more users? Will the ability to stream your updates to Twitter prompt Facebook users to create accounts? Probably not.

There would need to be some incentive for those who do not have accounts to sign up at Twitter (there is presumably a reason they have not already done so) but it may not be in Facebook’s interests for this to happen.

Any time spent away from the mothership is potentially lost advertising opportunity and in-game purchases – this would have to be weighed up against the possible increase in traffic resulting from the shared updates. It, therefore, becomes an easier way for Facebook users to achieve what they may already be doing without ever needing to leave the site.

Twitter’s main boost would consequently appear to be the additional content from those who already have accounts. The additional volumes can only be guessed at but, unfortunately, they may not be as high as originally envisaged – some users already use third-party clients to post to multiple networks.

We must also remember that, just as with Subscriptions, the majority of Facebook users will most likely never enable this feature even if they have a Twitter account.

Facebook stands to gain far more from this move – it would not be considered if there was the slightest doubt that it could be at all damaging to the social behemoth.

Double edged sword

While any influx in content will be welcomed by Twitter could such a move potentially put it at risk? If users see that conversations are happening elsewhere will they be tempted to follow the white rabbit and have that conversation at Facebook instead?

Twitter is anxious to grow; there is the potential for some Facebook users to create accounts and Twitter certainly needs the traffic but at the same time it doesn’t want to lose the resulting discourse: a double-edged sword.

Would Twitter run the gauntlet and block updates from Facebook if they were found to be having a negative impact? Could it afford to and would that be a battle Twitter would even want to fight?

Opening your service via an API can have enormous benefits but this is an instance where being open could potentially backfire and should serve as a warning to Google as they continue to develop the API for Google+.

Cross-posting

The topic again raises the spectre of cross-posting and whether it is a blessing or a curse.

Whether on Facebook, FriendFeed or Buzz, users have generally been unhappy about having a Twitter feed automatically pumped into their stream but, as the content of Twitter is generally isolated remarks, many without context, often coupled with external links streaming public Facebook data to Twitter may not feel out-of-place.

We have often heard the argument “I’d follow you on x network if I wanted to see this” so will users turn against those posting their Facebook updates to Twitter? That users would also need to create a Facebook account in order to see or interact with these items may be an additional stumbling block but, based on the numbers involved, Twitter users are far more likely to have a Facebook account than the other way round.

Changes

There are big changes happening at Facebook and, whether you believe the service is losing its way or its identity, flooding a rival network with links may cause those who have neglected their accounts – or even resisted the siren’s call – to think again.

Images by Candice Linkie Photography and Simon Blackley

Is Facebook adapting to the “social norm” or has the perceived threat from Google+ caused it to go against the grain in a thinly veiled attempt at user retention?

Facebook periodically goes through times of change, especially around the f8 developer conference, but often these changes are largely cosmetic giving us redesigns or updated ways of doing the same things.

Without any real competition Facebook has been able to coast along – a little tweak here, a new design there – but recently the social status quo has been disrupted and the changes we are seeing have been more specific, more focused.

Facebook boasts Skype video chat, targeted sharing, smart lists automatically curating our family and work colleagues, and now Subscriptions. There is, consequently, a much greater emphasis placed upon groups or lists.

Unlike previously, all these features appear to be in direct response to the challenge posed by Google+.

All change

We have always known exactly where we were with Facebook: while privacy settings may sometimes be over-complicated or unnecessarily hidden away there is the ever-present safety net of the “friending model”.

Indeed, Facebook has prided itself on the very nature of the friending model and the security it affords; relationships are synchronous and, therefore provide a level of trust not available with a following model where anyone can see you.

By requiring confirmation that you “know” someone before they can see your updates and can interact with them you are in control – the follower model does not, by default, provide this.

With subscriptions, however, Facebook have gone against the grain and given us a means to implement the follower model directly at odds with the way we all know the site operates and are familiar with.

Yes, we have to enable subscriptions for our profile (can you imagine the public outcry over privacy if they were enabled by default) so we are explicitly “pre-approving” connections made in this way but, at first glance, it still seems to fly in the face of everything that Facebook has held itself up to be. Should we be concerned?

Fan pages for the masses?

The fan page is, obviously and by necessity, separate from your personal wall; its whole purpose is to be public so that followers can easily subscribe to updates about brands, celebrities, services, events, etc. Our personal walls are different. By design they are restricted and, in the simplest of terms, the friending model lets us the choose who we can see our wall and interact with it.

We may need to make the odd tweak so that, for example, our boss doesn’t see something we would prefer they didn’t but friending is the core control.

Enable Subscriptions and the personal wall instantly becomes a fan page.

The impact this has on our use of Facebook is enormous as the onus firmly shifts to the user to ensure that they are sharing correctly to the right groups; once we have crossed the line we can no longer rely on the friending model to reduce the impact of any mistakes.

Groups or lists have never played a large part in the way most of us have used Facebook but they are now pushed to the fore in a way that directly mirrors the operation of Circles on Google+ enabling us to use the same feed for different purposes based on the target audience of each item.

Who is subscription for?

Will the majority of people enable Subscriptions to their profiles? Probably not, but those that do are negating the need for friending especially if they enable the option for subscribers to comment on public posts. By allowing anyone to view our updates and interact with them the friend limit becomes irrelevant.

With Subscriptions, is Facebook purely reacting to Google+ or is it going one step further by allowing us to divide our relationships within the service into two distinct categories: the traditional friend and the casual acquaintance? Friending could be reserved for those closest to us and our other connections made by way of subscription. We may well have bilateral following (as on Twitter or Plus) but there is not the trusted link as with actually friending someone.

Options or reactions?

Has Facebook accepted that the friending model may not fit everyone and is therefore giving us a choice or is this purely an attempt to retain users by reducing the need for them to go elsewhere, as I have mentioned before.

We do not know the real reason for these changes (although we can have a good guess) as all services will adapt to closer conform to the “social norm“ but it remains to be seen if Subscriptions will eventually replace friending altogether; that would be a sorry day for Facebook as it will have lost one of its biggest differentiators.

Image by lawtonchiles

Social networks are becoming ever more complex with increasingly sophisticated methods of grouping and sharing in a bid to gain and retain users but, is this always necessary or the right direction to take?

Twitter grew from an SMS application and ever since has stuck to its roots and refused to abandon the option to communicate on the web using the humble text message. The short, sharp status updates of only 140 characters, while sometimes a bit limiting, are the perfect antithesis of the more verbose Facebook and Google+.

Simple

The simplicity of Twitter is the key attraction; the speed with which you can scan through a lot of information coupled with the absolute ease of access – there is virtually no barrier to entry – means there is no reason why anyone can’t send a tweet from just about anywhere.

This simplicity, ease and speed are what make it perfect for real-time news coverage and instant reaction to events.

Less is more

I have written in the past of additional functionality that I would like to see within the current interface – most specifically a form of topic or event based channels – but the news that Twitter is planning to simplify its interface and standardise it across the multiple means of access (web, mobile app, etc.) is quite refreshing and shows that, yet again, the service is keen to honour its beginnings and resist the temptation to force competition with those it is not directly comparable with.

The figures released by Dick Costolo showing that only 50% of Twitter’s 200 million accounts are live - 40% of which don’t actually tweet - illustrate that Twitter needs to get back on track and recover some of its lost momentum. The initial explosion in user adoption was, no doubt, due in part to this very simplicity but an abundance of feature additions and the #newtwitter interface placed additional barriers in the way of easy use.

Fred Wilson points out that the number of accounts - and subsequently active users (those who have actually logged in) – is misleading as Twitter, unlike Facebook, allows visitors to view content without being logged in or even having an account. The actual potential “customer” base is, therefore much higher and taking steps to ensure that all customers (active or otherwise) can find relevant content will be of benefit.

The reported 400 million unique visits to twitter.com will, however, include those who may visit the homepage and immediately leave as there is no obvious way to interact without signing in or creating an account so we must be careful not to assume that this high figure translates into actual “users”.

The silent majority

While the ratio of creators to curators to consumers may be incredibly bottom heavy for content such as blog posts and videos I would argue that with status updates it could be considerably more evenly spread. This was the case in Twitter’s earlier years and moves to simplify the service may encourage some of the logged out users to log in again and, perhaps, the casual viewer to even create an account.

It is undeniable that a logged in user is far more valuable to Twitter as the business model will include more targeted ad campaigns but the logged out or casual user must not be ignored as it is in Twitter’s interests to encourage them to become active.

Image by R_rose

A growing frustration amongst Google+ users over functionality and talks of a large percentage abandoning their accounts leads us to wonder how the service will grow and attract users.

I asked last week if Google+ needed to quickly go public in order to grow as usage of the site seemed to be declining from a peak in July. Even if the service were to be opened up now how would Google encourage users to join?

Listening to the discussion about Google+ on last Sunday’s episode of This Week in Tech the one comment that really stood out was “everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook” – if you want to connect you can’t afford not to be.  Scoble has said (on Plus of all places) that Facebook “owns” people.

How does Google+ compete with that? It can’t, directly.

If Google cannot immediately compete with Facebook for getting new users off the street and in the door what will their angle need to be? What will be the tipping point for the adoption of Plus?

The interest graph

The Suggested User List, while not courting favour with many, does at least show us one thing: Google are thinking about the interest graph. By breaking down the suggested users into their groups – news, tech, politics etc. – they are helping users to “follow their interests”, with forgotten of labelling and filtering this could potentially be better than Twitter which uses this line as its hook.

While the Stream component may feel like it Google+ is not just a social network and the stream is only a part, albeit the most visible part. We cannot yet appreciate it but the stream is the glue that will bind the Google ecosystem together, an aggregator of our actions in other Google services and a place to discuss and communicate with others about our activities.

Google hopes that the social layer they are building will add sufficient value that we will want to use their services more and more so that we they can build our usage profile while we populate our personal one.

Google are shelving products and streamlining their offering – those products will live on, however, because of the integration of their various technologies in to Plus.

Will Latitude exist as a separate service or will it be integrated into the location functionality of G+? How about Knol? The FAQ states: “Knol has one goal: to help you share what you know” if it’s all about sharing then could this also be integrated – we have circles to replicate group owned knols.

By migrating users of other discontinued products Google could coerce people into adopting the new service. Additionally, by offering social functionality elsewhere Google will be getting users to join Plus by the back door.

Sharing a YouTube video? Have it posted to Plus automatically so that it may be discussed while the comments flow back and forth between the two sites; the same with Picasa (this is mostly already there) and Blogger etc.

This will only happen once Plus is public and fully integrated – a long easy off – but this degree of integration may deter some.

Clutter free

Currently, the refreshing thing about Plus for many is the lack of API – there is no way to auto-post from anywhere; all sharing is deliberate and targeted. Fast forward 6 months once we have an API and integration into a multitude of outside services could cause upset due to untargeted ‘noise’.

We have people on Facebook, Twitter and, from the Google perspective, on Buzz who will block or unfollow others who are automatically feeding in their updates from other networks – tweets in to Facebook or Buzz, Foursquare check-ins amongst others in to Twitter.

What, a few years ago, seemed to be a utopian dream of interconnected social services all sharing data has, instead, become a fight to stave off the noise.

Plus must learn from Buzz and FriendFeed by providing effective filtering methods such as hiding all updates from certain services (hide tweets, mute Google Reader posts) etc.

Real world sharing

One concern is that Google+ will, perhaps by necessity, move away from its basic tenet: “real world sharing”.

Everything that happens now is shaping the service for the future. Google will, no doubt, have in mind a plan of what is to come but they are also reacting to the community. They must strike a sufficient balance to prevent a similar problem faced by Twitter where the user and ecosystem drove the development of the service.

There may have been around 30 million accounts created but if the rumours of approximately an 80% attrition rate are true we are left with the active users being mostly the edge cases. The worry is that the service may get built around these and isolate the more casual user, something I wrote about before over 3 years ago.

The growth of Google+ will be hard but worth the fight.

Image by Leonard John Matthews