The Wind Before the Storm
Date: March 28, 2013Category: Author: Danielle Azar
Facebook has announced some big changes that should be rolling out in the next couple weeks. One is the mass implementation of Graph Search. Graph search is supposed to make search more social by letting users search for people, places, and things based on the likes and check-ins of people they know. For business pages, places with the most likes and check-ins are going to be showing up first, which means that likes and check-ins are going to matter even more than they already do. Facebook also recently announced a news feed makeover that is supposed to make pictures and videos bigger and make ads look more visually enticing. It seems like every site , whether it be news or fashion, is revamping their visual representation lately. I call it the “Pinterest effect”.
While these large changes are still a few weeks away, there are some smaller adjustments I’ve noticed as recently as last night that have already taken place. Here they are:
- The “Reply” link: Starting yesterday, business pages I manage starting showing an option to activate “replies” to anyone who comments on your posts. I activated a few to see what the difference is and think it will be useful. Instead of having to type in the name of the person whose comment you’re replying to, you can just hit the reply link and it will automatically reply to the right commentator, thus informing them that I, the business, am reading their comments and do care what they have to say.
- Drag & Drop pictures: Apparently, this new feature is for personal profiles only, but as of last night, you can drag and drop pictures from your desktop right into your status posts. You can even drop more than one picture into a post, although I haven’t tried that out yet to see if it produces an album. This feature is not allowed yet for business pages but if it eventually does get added, it will make posting just that much easier.
- An unintentional flaw: Something else I noticed just today as I try to schedule posts for tomorrow is that the post scheduler will not work. I don’t know if it’s just me it’s not working for but it’s not for any of my 16 business pages or personal page. I wonder if anyone else is having this problem. Looks like I will be working from home tomorrow after all.
Looks like Facebook is making a conscious effort to simplify the user experience before they roll out the really big changes. I haven’t heard any backlash over these small changes but I’m sure there will be backlash over the ones that are coming soon.
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