Faceboost

I think it’s high time someone sat Mark Zuckerberg down and informed him that people aren’t all that keen on change. It seems that he and his Facebook cronies have a vicious pact going to change Facebook as soon as the public have had the slightest chance to adjust to the last set of changes. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that inwardly groaned at the thought of this massive inconvenience to my habitual stalking methods. So what can we expect from the new Facebook?

First up there’s the changes to the newsfeed. Basically it’s like a social networking version of Inception. There’s a newsfeed within a newsfeed with the new real-time update box, plus the actual newsfeed has been separated into “Top Stories” and “Most Recent”. What a faff. Every time I sign in I’m bombarded with news filling every inch of my screen and it’s stressing me out. Facebook have said that the changes to the newsfeed are great for signposting the key updates you’ve missed while you were away and the news you will deem the most interesting. It does make you wonder though, how do the Facebook gods know what will qualify as a “Top Story” for you personally? It seems my fears have been confirmed, Facebook is more of a creeper than me.

Many will also have noticed the subscribe buttons popping up when you look on someone’s profile. By subscribing you choose how much you want to hear from a particular person, either all updates, most or only important ones. So, if you’re sick of getting constant statuses/rubbish song lyrics from that emotionally unstable friend you can now opt out of those but still see their interaction with other people. Ideal. Plus you can now subscribe to interesting famous people too,Twitter beware.

The official Facebook blog has also been talking up the new and improved friend lists, saying that they are a more convenient way to share information with the people you want, rather than your entire friendship list. This is probably going to be quite a popular move with those types who like toclique-ify everything, right down to their Facebook. Just think, now you can share that hilarious clip of a cat working a printer or whatever without having to share it with that friend whose cat has just died/printer has just broken. Thoughtful.

Now onto the big change: the timeline. Oh it sounds so…like a history assignment. With the timeline you get a completely re-vamped profile, featuring a massive picture of you and then a timeline of everything you ever did on Facebook EVER, even when you were a bit of a freak back in year ten. This is bad. Just think. Every vacuous, inane status update, every gushy post (we are all offenders) will be viewable once more. You stop that right now, Zuckerberg.

But it doesn’t end there, oh no, soon you will even be able to watch film and television streaming from your Facebook. American users have been able to do this for some time, and now Miramax is on board and has allowed for ten titles to be rented out to UK users. I’ve also noticed over the past week the rise in Spotify notifications too (“James is listening to ‘I wanna Dance with Somebody’ by Whitney Houston” being one of my favourite updates this week). Basically, Facebook has teamed up with loads of sites in order to dominate every single technologically aided form of entertainment you ever experience.

I don’t know about you but this all seems like a bid to get you to never, ever leave Facebook again. It reminded me of that great line from the Eagles “Hotel California”: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”. You’re starting to look a bit desperate Facebook, for goodness sake play a little harder to get.