Will Facebook become the world's home page?

Because that is the direction that Facebook clearly wants to go.

Make no mistake: the changes announced today by Mark Zuckerberg to the world's favourite social networking site have a significance beyond the new layout to the home page and the fact that Twitter should be more than a little worried about the tanks that Facebook has just parked on its lawn.

By making itself a real-time service and allowing users to have updates from companies, celebrities, news organisations, their mum and their local bar right in their news feed, Facebook is on its way to becoming a "life feed" for its users. 

That is, the page that people use to keep up to date with their life, the only page that they keep open on their computer to communicate with their friends, their co-workers and the world at large. As it is, more than 50 per cent of the 175 million users of Facebook come back to the site every day.

Now I know that Facebook users were able to do get a lot of this sort of content on their news feed already (with a bit of twiddling) but the new layout of having the "Stream of Updates" (my initial caps) front and centre on the home page underlines this aim.

Here's Zuckerberg from his blog:

"We believe that connecting people to their friends is just the beginning, and we're working hard on making Facebook a place for people to connect with and keep track of all the interests in their lives.

"One way to think about this is as a timeline—or a stream. As people share more, the timeline gets filled in more and more with what is happening with everything you're connected to. The pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it.

As this happens, people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself."

I think that most Facebook users will welcome the changes - I like them because I like Twitter. (But there will be the inevitable protest groups.)

Speaking of Twitter, the arguments have already started as to whether this will kill Twitter's growth. I can't believe that it won't affect it simply because there are too many millions of Facebook users who have never seen Twitter and will simply enjoy the Twitter-like features of the new version without feeling the need to try the microblogging site.

But the simplicity of Twitter - it does instant broadcast updates really, really well - means that I think it will survive happily alongside Facebook.

As for Facebook and Zuckerberg, this shows that how nimble the company can be. The changes should enthuse companies to take advantage of Facebook's size to get at consumers and that should help the site make money. "The concept of being connected has a lot of value," Zuckerberg intoned. He's not wrong.

Comments

[Justin Reid]

I like facebook, but where it falls down is the sense of a walled garden. It is a social network, but the chances are that your socialising with someone you already know.
Twitter allows you to network with people you would never have hooked up with otherwise. Also, the versatility of it's API allows for some interesting ways to connect and monitor your stream. FB is still too resrivtive on that front.