
Introducing the New Profile - michaelnovati
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=462201327130
======
primigenus
One thing that's fascinating me is how they're letting this update deploy
virally, by itself.

You sign up for the new profile and your friends are going to see you did. If
several of your friends do it, you're going to see that a number of them did.
This is bound to be at least somewhat convincing, given that you trust your
friends more than the faceless evil of Facebook Corp, and therefore it might
be worth doing, and your curiosity will be piqued.

Given Facebook's history with negative feedback around new features, this
seems to me like the most brilliant part of the entire new profile - and it's
very subtle, too.

~~~
evanrmurphy
> _One thing that's fascinating me is how they're letting this update deploy
> virally, by itself._

Are you saying it's opt-in only for everyone? My friend got the new profile
automatically, though I did not. I see that I can choose to get it manually,
but the FAQ also says you cannot revert.

Perhaps I've misunderstood your comment. I would be really impressed if the
feature had total viral deployment (i.e. opt-in only for everyone), and if it
allowed you to change back to the old profile at will.

~~~
primigenus
I imagine they'd seed a few million profiles to start with, so probably a few
people ("a few million" equates to "a few" in the Facebook ecosystem!) got
converted over to hotstart things. Not surprising, really.

Allowing you to change back to your old profile at will wouldn't be a very
feasible move, I'd imagine. You want to move your userbase over to the new
code as soon as possible so you can start iterating on that for everyone,
without worrying about maintaining two versions.

~~~
evanrmurphy
> _Allowing you to change back to your old profile at will wouldn't be a very
> feasible move, I'd imagine._

I agree. It would be a real headache. That's why I would have been really
impressed if they did it. Or rather, I would have been really impressed if
they found a way to do it that wasn't a headache. :)

------
meterplech
I'm impressed by how small the teams remain at Facebook. His profile shows
that he worked on this profile revamp with only 6 other people, as well as
Chat with 5 others, and the iPhoto exporter himself at a Hackathon. While
there have been reports of Google's teams burgeoning in size, it seems that at
least for now Facebook is keeping them small. Obviously, these products have
had perhaps less depth than Wave for example (which had a 30 person team
[http://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-cant-build-
instagr...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-cant-build-
instagram-2010-11)). But, still, it says something about Facebook that they
are attempting to keep team size small.

~~~
bkhl
This also implies that Facebook grills their engineers to the point where
engineers would get exhausted so easily. Executing huge features with small
teams is very great for the company, but does that necessarily mean it's a
great place to work? For instance, recently graduated people would be very
suitable for Facebook because they are young and single (as in not married).
However, people with families would less likely to work for Facebook.

~~~
encoderer
Does it? Not necessarily. At my previous employer I was one of several team
leads and we almost always broke into 4-8 man teams.

One of my biggest takeaways from doing that for a couple years is how
dramatically productivity can swing based on factors like the texture of the
project, the clarity of the goal, the freedom of the TL to make judgment calls
without needing to get approval from a BA, morale, the quality of the spec
(note that quality != length), etc.

No reason a small dedicated team cannot build large products with reasonable
deadlines and a balanced lifestyle. Though, in the interest of full
disclosure, in my opinion 50 hours a week is fully balanced and a team can run
at 50 hours pretty consistently without ill effects if they WANT to and are
HAPPY with their mission and job.

------
waterlesscloud
Perhaps the most convenient change is that all 4 display ads are now above the
scroll line, even on my netbook. Thanks Facebook!

~~~
jyoti00
Basically, the new profile has become more ad-friendly than what it used to
be, user friendly. No, I don't like the way my communications (Wall Posts)
have been sidelined and ads have become the most prominent feature in my
profile page.

------
dwynings
Sign up here: <http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/>

~~~
tokenadult
And Facebook told me that you (my Facebook friend) already had signed up as
soon as I visited that page from the link submitted here on HN.

~~~
joshwa
annoyingly, it published a story about this to my friends; one that I can't
delete.

------
d_r
I wonder why Facebook moved away from easy Twitter-style status posting. It
used to be (about two versions ago) that the "what's on your mind" textbox was
open by default and it was easy to post a status. For sometime now, you have
to click "Status" first to do it, which almost seems like they'd like to
discourage users from doing it?

~~~
thomaspaine
Based on the analytics at a startup I used to work at, photos are a much
better driver of user engagement than status updates. I'm guessing the same is
true for facebook, and anecdotally, most of the facebook comments I receive
are on photos and shared links, not status updates.

~~~
enjo
Wow.. my feed (primarily non-technical) couldn't be more different. I'd
estimate it abouts 80% status updates and comments on the same.

------
marcusbooster
It looks like the update is mostly with photos, but I would really prefer an
update to the tagging system. Easier control of who is allowed to tag you,
what they can tag, and who is allowed to see it.

~~~
gte910h
I think there should be a couple use cases facebook _always_ protects from,
and proves that they aren't going to hurt the person. Here is one:

"Mary is an abused spouse, beaten inches from death once upon a time by her
abusive husband. She has since left him and moved to another city entirely, in
hiding."

Nothing in the system should allow any information about Mary to leak out. Not
pictures of her, not her updates, not her level of participation in the site
even. Your tagging is broken if you allow her to be tagged or captions to
point her out.

~~~
Estragon
It would be nice if facebook pursued the design goal you've outlined, but it
would be irresponsible to interact with the facebook system as if that goal
had been achieved and cemented for all time.

I think the guiding principle for Mary, or any user, should be that she
doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publically
known and tied to her real-life identity.

~~~
tapp
> I think the guiding principle for Mary...should be that she doesn't type
> anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publicly known

That was Eric Schmidt's answer a while back too, but I'm not sure it's
adequate anymore.

As PG has remarked, more and more of the tools we use to interact with the
world are becoming software (and as all software is increasingly web-enabled &
socialized, that's often indistinguishable from "typing it into a browser" for
purposes of this discussion.)

We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting
to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite
hermit. Is that really the best we can do?

It's a tough question to answer as an entrepreneur, because it probably is a
much smaller opportunity, and by definition doesn't enjoy the same viral loops
- - but I wish it's one that we as an industry would spend more time on.

~~~
edanm
"We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting
to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite
hermit. Is that really the best we can do?"

Not exactly. We're telling people that they're not going to have privacy,
period. We're assuming that privacy is dead. You might think it's still
something that can be salvaged, but lots of people assume that the world is
moving to less privacy whatever we do. Which is why we should be education
people from the start that, whether we like it or not, anything they type into
a computer is basically public.

I especially like Scoble's thoughts on this. He says, rightly I believe, that
anything that is a copy-paste away from becoming public, isn't really private
at all. He also had the fun adventure of having many private emails being made
public as part of lawsuits against Microsoft.

Also, you might want to read about The Transparent Society:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society>.

------
OzzyB
[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc4/hs737.snc4/65739...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc4/hs737.snc4/65739_10150113084606729_20531316728_7289445_369369_n.jpg)

I love how that looks. They put all the useful information into a nice bit-
sized block, yum... all that's missing now is the guy's SSN.

~~~
balac
don't make that information public, and don't friend people you don't know and
you will be fine.

~~~
mike-cardwell
You forgot: Make sure you stay logged in constantly, checking for changes,
just in case Facebook change their privacy settings again and make stuff
public that previously wasn't.

------
phwd
The comments on that page are actually very interesting to read. I try to do
my part to filter by voting down what I do not like and voting up what should
be addressed. That is just how it is when you allow 500M users to say their
view regardless of age group and other demographics. You get a multi-layer of
" I want this , this and not this " but then a next person says the opposite.
Some people want it to stay the same ...others welcome change.

They are not joking around when they meant that they wanted to make the world
more social. Because of this change my dad realized where the Poke Button was
located. Go dad.... If you remembered the boxes' (Top Friends ,Gift Boxes etc)
removal a while back you would see that (at least to me) the current change
made sense. Now the focus really is in the interaction with the user
(info,photos and wall are packed in the top middle) and their interests not
the "glitz and glamour"

Now the real item that needs /that I hope it is not really a need.. I cannot
tell Facebook what they can and cannot do/ to be addressed is the 10% of
friends option ( this has been discussed in other formats 10 friends,8 friends
..etc). The everyday user does not interact with all of their "Friends". If
you can force me to choose only 10 or so of my real friends to interact with
..those that I mail,sms,send messages, actually see outside ... that would be
great.

If you could even couple notifications with Facebook Chat on your phone ...
FBM (FaceBook Messenger) /BBM/ . Just an alternate reality thought.

------
br1
I just realized that Facebook uses data more structured than their crushed
competition. The relational database pundit in me rejoices.

------
flyosity
I'm upset that they won't let you put programming languages into the
"Languages You Speak" box.

There's gotta be at least one Facebook engineer lurking on this post. If so,
how about a fix? :)

------
kloncks
...and just like that, Facebook revamps profile to add Twitter-like sharing,
MySpace-like focus on pictures and media, and LinkedIn-like employment,
education, and projects details.

This is brilliant. It's good ole Facebook with Twitter + LinkedIn + MySpace.
Executed brilliantly!

~~~
CGamesPlay
I'm a little curious as to what you mean by "Twitter-like sharing". Wasn't the
old way more like Twitter?

~~~
kloncks
I'm largely talking about where I see Facebook going, rather than just this
specific update.

Overall, I think the Twitter-like feature updates have been numerous and
obvious.

~~~
Klonoar
Well then you're missing something that some of us haven't seen. Could you
answer his question instead of vaguely sidestepping it, please?

~~~
batiudrami
The specific features happened when status updates changed from being a minor
(in the right sidebar) to major part of the website, with the large 'What's on
your mind' box at the top. It was a while ago, rather than being specific to
this update.

------
waterlesscloud
Another change that must be fairly recent:

If you admin a fan page, you can now see instant info on each post, including
number of impressions and percent of feedback..

"174 Impressions Raw number of times this story has been seen on your Wall and
in the News Feed of your Fans · 0.57% Feedback"

~~~
nano81
[http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/01/20/facebooks-page-
admi...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/01/20/facebooks-page-
administration-tools-getting-upgrades/)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Weird. I definitely did not have that on pages this September, when I was
actively managing a page for an event. I'd have been very happy if I had.

------
rohi81
From my perspective this is more structuring of data. If you look at the
profile in the example its a very clear organization step.Advertisers will now
have a better and easy targeting mechanism than the usual demographics
info.This I think is more of user training where people enter the data on how
facebook wants to see it; why would a friend of mine who has known me long
enough need information in this structure?

Facebook is now going to be able to sell super targeting techniques to
marketers. Google relied on machines to do this, Facebook just asked its users
to do the same;needless to say its a master stroke :).

------
cantbecool
Why do people care so much about minute differences in terms of functionality
and layout on facebook?

~~~
pclark
You'd care if Hacker News changed in functionality and layout.

------
bgentry
In the guided tour and blog post, it says that the photos displayed at the top
of your "new profile" are "recently tagged photos". Most of the ones that keep
showing up for me are very old. Is everybody else experiencing that?

It also seems like the order of the photos is somewhat randomized when I go to
view all of my photos (as opposed to being reverse chronological order).
Weird.

~~~
sounddust
Yeah, same here. It seems a bit buggy; a couple more examples: it's impossible
to say you live in Paris, France (only random cities elsewhere in the world
named Paris), I can't turn on chat while looking at any of the profile pages
(but can turn it on on any other page), etc..

------
indrekj
"Share: Question" doesn't do anything (ajax 404).

~~~
AdamTReineke
Hehe, yup, I checked too. :-)

------
siddhant
Its interesting to see how Facebook keeps on coming up with changes in its UI
every now and then. Take one look at Orkut in its current state and you have
enough reasons to assume that either they don't have any designer working on
it, or even if they do, they simply aren't putting enough resources.

------
faramarz
I simply love the idea of letting you tag people in the employment history
box, and list the projects you've worked on. See
[http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc4/hs1223.snc4/1555...](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-
snc4/hs1223.snc4/155591_10150113086206729_20531316728_7289482_5419270_n.jpg)

Give it 3 months before LinkedIn follow suit. fb Keeps morphing ideas into new
realities. I have never seen short cycle iterations at this level ever before.
They make it extremely difficult for a new player in this space to ever keep
up with the level of innovation and change facebook has baked into their
culture.

The facebook of last month is too dull and less-relevant than the facebook of
next month. Well done, and I salute Zuck for not selling out in the tech world
as so many others have.

------
benatkin
My comment on the page, pretending FB is going to read it:

> I like the additional structured data. Even if I had time to figure out how
> to structure my Facebook data the way you've done it with this release, it
> doesn't help much because my friends would have to pick apart the structure.
> It's a framework where you can expect certain things to be in certain
> places, like Ruby on Rails.

I was annoyed when they made everyone convert interests to links to pages, but
it adds more edges to the graph, and graphs between entities (starting with
people) has always been a big part of Facebook.

------
marciovm123
Looks like Facebook is going for the social resume play w/ the jobs/projects
page -- unlike LinkedIn, you add _WHO_ you worked with, which makes all the
difference. Just missing whose contribution you "liked" to get a professional
endorsement graph.

~~~
noarchy
I definitely won't be making use of that. I go out of my way to keep my
professional contacts and info far away from my Facebook profile. I use
LinkedIn for professional contacts, and I keep that decoupling quite
intentionally. My privacy settings on Facebook are cranked up about as high as
I can get them, while my LinkedIn info is largely public.

------
furyg3
Interesting that FB notified a 'pending' friend (someone who's friend request
I have not yet accepted) that I have switched to the new profile. Seems
strange...

------
AdamTReineke
I like it, but the Education info seems buggy. I added half a dozen classes to
my college, and now have half a dozen college entries each with one class. :-(

------
metageek
> _Featured Friends_

> _You can now highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your
> family, best friends or teammates._

Cue increased drama in 3...2...1...

------
dekayed
Is it just me or are the advertisements when viewing a profile larger and more
in focus?

------
wyclif
New profile, but Last.fm still loads blank in Chrome after several months.

~~~
milkshakes
developer build? mine screws up a few pages

~~~
wyclif
I thought it was going to be just the dev build, but in Chrome stable it
doesn't load either. So, not sure why saying so provokes downvoting...

~~~
rradu
<http://last.fm>? Loads fine for me in Chrome.

~~~
wyclif
No, Last.fm Profile (in Facebook).

------
zone2
any one know how i can switch it back to the "old" one?

~~~
davidwparker
Seconded. I tested it out, and I don't prefer it... but I can't find a way to
switch back. Anyone know how to switch back or is it even possible?

------
jdp23
not sure how much to read into this, but the comments on the Facebook
discussion are overwhelmingly negative

~~~
brown9-2
Every Facebook UI change is the worst change ever since the last Facebook UI
change.

------
crocowhile
The comments on that page hurt my brain.

------
phlux
"As you can see, Mr. Anderson, we've been keeping our eye on you for... some
time now" < _slides FB profile dossier across table_ >

------
haploid
I wonder how long their software deployment process takes. I do not see this
change, nor do I see an option to switch to this change.

