Facebook are planning a redesign of user profiles this spring, aiming to make the profiles simpler and more relevant while giving a greater degree of control to the users.
The draft design uses a tabbed layout for the wide column with the initial set of tabs for a Wall, an About page and Photos. Applications can also be set up in custom tabs, but these are configured and controlled by the user.
The design changes are intended to “align the goals of application developers with the principles of the Platform ecosystem”. This, combined with the earlier introduction of “allocations” to ration the features available to unruly applications illustrate Facebook’s strategy of ecological platform development; changing an environment in which desirable behaviours are easier and more profitable than undesirable ones.
Facebook is introducing allocation systems to improve user experience on its platform. Earlier this month limits were placed on notifications based on the rates with which users ignore, hide or report them as spam. After receiving positive feedback for this move Facebook are now extending the allocation system to cover requests and invites.
This change will alter the application ecology, making it more likely that applications aligning themselves with users aims and goals will have more generous allocations and spread more effectively than applications that spam their users’ friends.
Application Developers will have access to User Response Metrics that indicate how their applications are perceived, which in turn influences how allocations are assigned to different functions.
Though not directly related to the current change, FaberNovel’s presentation contains an interesting, if slightly out of date, overview of Facebook. In particular slide 28 highlights the need for new metrics in social media sites.
Orkut, has introduced a new feature that increases the privacy of it’s members. Community owners can now choose whether to make their content private, so that only community members can view discussions, forums and events.
This follows on from recent functional refinements and awareness raising activities relating to individuals’ privacy settings.
The change opens up the possibility of using Orkut for applications that require greater trust and security e.g. maintaining family contacts, supporting distance learning activities or organizing local clubs and societies. Its also reflects an increasing level of activity and discussion around broad issues of online privacy and ownership of social graph data.
Facebook and Open Social applications are able to access their installer’s social graph. So, when I trust you as a friend I’m also entrusting some of my data to your applications. There are fine and evolving balances to be drawn between convenience and security that should give us a more granular choice than simply whether to be exposed or anonymous.
It was a welcome relief at Monday’s Vancouver Facebook Developer Garage to see so many useful, well-designed and well engineered applications. Of particular note is Active State’s Eat-O-Rama.
A restaurant discovery and rating application written in Python with a mySQL database, the application’s smooth and responsive interface shows the quality that can be expected from a dedicated, experienced team devoting months of focussed effort. Equally impressive is the commitment to a development philosophy that makes comparison testing an integral part of the design process.
Some notable quotes from the presentation are:
“People like to interact where no response is necessary, but a response is possible.”
“The most important thing is to deliver real value to the person using the application. Then impart additional value to their friends.”
Details of the other applications presented are on Miss 604’s blog, which amazingly was produced live during the event.
The introduction of a Javascript client levels the playing field for developers who can now make Facebook API calls purely from static html files, significantly reducing the load on the server. There are some limitations; the photo upload api won’t work and only the current users profile page can be written to, but the remainder of the api still functions.
Below you'll find links to the latest comments, notes and tweets that I've made while wandering around the web. These are consolidated using FriendFeed.
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