Facebook’s f8 Developer Conference took place, kicking-off with a keynote from
Mark Zuckerberg, who unveiled a series of major improvements including Timeline, new permission functionality, and the next generation of social app functionality which leverages custom objects across the Open Graph.
In this post, we’ll provide a summary of what we heard and point to some of the ways in which it will impact brands on the Facebook platform.
Timeline
Timeline is the new concept for the user’s profile and it’s designed to be much more engaging and thorough. Previously, when you viewed a user’s profile
it’s likely that you would spend about 5 minutes or less exploring. One goal of this release is to increase that time dramatically. Here’s what’s responsible for deeper engagement:
- Timeline is a compressed representation of “the story of your life”.
- It compresses events more and more as you go back in time thus providing perspective in a single page.
- It incorporates a broader range of media and external apps.
Zuckerberg positioned Timeline as “ the best way to express who we are.” In the new paradigm this includes not just what we’re doing today, but the context of the most important activities of our lives. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.
The new profile page includes a large header image along with your existing profile image. Under that there is a neat organization of stories, posts, media and external apps (cities visited, music listened to, books read, miles run, etc.). We are also able to highlight stories and even filter by our kind of media, like presenting a music timeline for example. The goal is to have a complete control over what we show, how we display it and who can see it.
It’s also possible to quickly go back in time to see what you were posting about a year ago today or four years ago. The experience is paired down but very similar in the mobile context and also supports quick navigation back into the timeline. Here’s a
video demonstration from Facebook.
So, what does this mean for brands? At at high-level the most important take-away is that Facebook is completely focused on user experience and driving engagement. This should give brands confidence that users will be bought into the platform enough to warrant continued investment. Granted, there are few brands questioning the value of Facebook at the moment but this kind of release should give brands confidence that there’s a steady stream of innovation to come. I’ll also touch on what this means for the overall user data-set and why this is important for brands below.
Ticker
Ticker is a secondary feed that’s part of your profile. It is distinguished by how “light” the content is. It’s the place where smaller events will go flying by. For example, you might see a friends listening to a tune on Spotify. This ties in really well with Facebook’s new verbs which I’ll cover below. It also enables quick interaction experiences with friends on the platform. In the example above, which Zuckerberg demoed, this would entail listening to the same tune at the same time while chatting.
Besides pulling the clutter out of your main feed, ticker creates more real estate for content. This is really the most important take-away for brands because it will impact how they reach users, especially using custom verbs. The big question which marketers will be asking over the next few weeks is what kinds of interaction Ticker really drives.
The Evolution Of The Open Graph
While Timeline is very impressive, it’s the evolution of the Open Graph that holds the greatest potential for brands on Facebook because it has a dramatic multiplication effect on how users can interact with content across
the semantic web. There are two key areas of this functionality that deserve more attention including new verbs and new social app functionality.
New Verbs
Previously it was possible to connect any two Facebook nodes with the “like” action, now it’s possible to create custom verbs to link nodes. This is a huge step forward because it allows users to express many more kinds of relationships that extend well beyond “like” (though we doubt “dislike” will be one of those options). For example, instead of “liking’ and movie, it’s possible to “watch” a movie. And more to the point it’s possible to “like” a movie and “watch” it to clarify your specific relationship to the content in question at the moment.
The Next Generation Of Social Apps
Facebook wants to take social applications to the next level by adding a social layer that empowers customers to express themselves more clearly while sharing. Zuckerberg spoke about how this will first impact those verticals that are already have a social orientation such as communication and games but that media (what we listen to, read, etc.) and lifestyle (our sports, activities, food choices, etc.) will follow quickly.
There are two important changes with social apps, the first has to do with permissions and represents a significant maturation of the Facebook platform. This move brings Facebook in the direction of email platforms and content publishers that let users express granular preferences as to how they’d like to receive content (content, frequency, etc). Extending permission marketing more deeply into the Facebook platform will offer real value for brands as well as users because it will lead to greater engagement rates with a frictionless experience. And, while it will limit overall reach to some degree this is partially
offset by Ticker which opens up more impression opportunities.
The second announcement of note is about how social applications will work with new verbs to drive Ticker and Timeline content. The implication of using custom verbs across the open graph to drive Ticker content is huge if Ticker proves to be engaging. In essence, no brand experience will be complete without relevant social expressions making their way into this feed. And, if those expressions are particularly relevant (for example, listening to the same song at the same time as a friend) the content will cross an algorithmic threshold and make it’s way into your Timeline. Here’s a
video demonstration from Facebook.
In conclusion, there are going to be tremendous opportunities for brands moving forward. From user experience enhancements that will keep users engaged longer, to a stronger implementation of permission based marketing that will lead to more application use the next year on Facebook is going to be very promising.
At Involver, we’re looking forward to leveraging custom verbs as soon as possible so stay tuned to our blog for more information.
Involver
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