Writing this partly when watching the live broadcast by Zuckerberg from the F8 conference.
First thing that came to mind (and I wasn't the only one) when seeing the new Timeline was MySpace. Many boxes, long pages and lot of images. Quoting myself, it might be awesome or confusing, or both, but the advertisers will love the data. According to Zuckerberg you can put your while life there - no word on what data will be shared with who. The Timeline will make your profile long. I remember that being a problem some years ago, when there was just too much stuff there.
One thing I also started wondering, how many people really want to check their friends' profiles daily, and how many do? Most just check the front page and only go to profiles when they need specific information.
The big theme on these new features seems to be sorting data, patterns on what you do and finding the highlights. Mostly of course done automatically by Facebook with Graph Rank. It will be interesting to see how much control the user will actually have. All this data will be turned into yearly reports on your life. Facebook will also let you see more about what you have done in the past.That will be interesting.
Spotify is getting a big shout out. What they show of how Facebook and Spotify work together looks pretty good. Not sure though if I really want everyone to see what I listen to (or watch, if the Netflix part will work the same way). I'm not sure if I really want to use the catalog Spotify has either, which is pretty limited for my taste, but that's another matter.
Will all the features server international customers? I know Hulu doesn't like non-US customers. Same goes for the new texts like "X is listening to Y". Those will be very difficult to translate to all languages. Then again Facebook has a record of not thinking of international users who don't use the English interface....
The social news might be interesting. It's how Fark.com got big.
And the more I see, the more stalkerish the new Facebook looks. They will know what you are listening, what you are watching, what games you are playing, what news you are reading, what you are eating, where and how long you ran... It still seems like they just can't grasp the idea that not everyone will want to share everything they do, and even less share it with strangers.
Graph Rank seems too good to be true. Will it really understand what I think is important? And how long until it will find Sarah Connor?
New features will launch between now and next two weeks.
For more info, check out the official Facebook page
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