The past week has been a blur - lots of updates to the Facebook layout/design have taken their toll on the unsuspecting populace. With the new timelines rolling out this Friday 09/30 - and not being sure if Facebook will offer a preview mode or just force everyone to deal - I thought this might be a good time to try to answer some questions from the audience on what's been going on.
So far, Shanika, I haven't seen anything in Facebook proper to remove the Ticker. There is a Chrome extension that will remove it for that browser, and you have to think there'll be a Firefox one as well. I actually like it - the scrolling activities are very twitter-esque. And if I want to be sucked into that, click through to see what's going on or who's listening to what, I can just click and be a part of the action. One downside is that some folks feel it's more invasive - but I don't think so. As far as I can tell, it's showing activity that has already been approved on your own wall - it didn't show main page before, but it wasn't completely locked down either. All that to say: I'm a fan, but if you're on Chrome and not a fan, you can block it and move on.
To be honest, I can neither confirm nor deny any of the above. But I will add this: Anything that makes George Takei make a video has got to be a good thing. Am I right?
[YouTube video of George Takei on Facebook's latest interface updates - http://youtu.be/1kNs4pxhRvc]
So, it's got that working for it, and that's a good thing.
In the "just kidding" category, we have all the "Facebook is charging" spam. Luckily, most of the people I follow on FB are smart enough to know that (1) this is untrue, and (2) that it's better to be snarky and sarcastic about it. It's been fun seeing the updates with folks trying to make fun of the meme this time around. It's been here before, and I'm sure we'll see some version of it later on as well. But here's something that I think we overlook: not only is Facebook FREE - but we are not necessarily the intended consumer - instead, we are the product:
Got questions? Leave them here or on twitter, hashtag #caffeinatedFB. - thanks!