The New, New…New Facebook

If you’ve logged in to Facebook recently, you’ll notice a lot of new changes the social network has made. It’s literally like they’ve completely redone the entire interface, which they’ve done in the past. After reading many negative status updates, and remembering in the past how the majority of you disliked the changes, I’m here to tell you: embrace it! The people at Facebook know what they’re doing. Before you know it, you will be adjusted to the amazing new features like the new subscriptions, ticker, tag review, and smart list options. But until you become acclimated, I’m here to help you figure everything out.

 

The newest feature to hit the most popular social network is subscriptions. Now, instead of just being able to decide to view or hide a certain person’s updates completely, you can subscribe to their posts as all updates, most updates, only important, or unsubscribe (which is different from unfriend). You can even choose what types of updates you will receive such as life events, status updates, photos and videos, games, comments and likes, and other activity. It’s convenient for everyone because now you can choose who’s updates you see on a daily basis on your newsfeed.

The new Facebook also features automatic groupings or “smart lists- lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city” and my favorite: restricted. Once clicked into a list, you can even update your status that only that group of  people can see. I love this new feature because I can easily see more of what I want on Facebook and less of what I don’t want to see, and more privacy. Facebook made these options easily accessible, at top right of each and every friend’s profile (along with the subscription options).

The most noticeable of all these changes is the Recent News and Top News refinements. Now, they are located on the same page, recent news stacked on top of the top news. It’s easier to see all of your friends activity this way and I’m sure you have all noticed that new ticker at the top of your chat window. It is a streaming update of all of your friends activity as it happens. It may be a little chaotic, but if you see something that catches your eye, you can hover over it and the post will pop up, letting you join in on the action.

My favorite of all these new features is one of the most vital privacy settings needed. Facebook has introduced a new “tag review” feature that allows users to review and approve anything you are tagged in before it goes onto your profile. That means that after those particularly incriminating nights where you’re dreading the next day when you know those photos will be posted, you can approve or deny then showing up on your photo feed. Before, they would automatically show up on your feed, and all you could do what wait until you had a computer available, do damage control and untag yourself from each picture.

To turn this amazing feature on, all you have to do is click the down arrow on the top left and scroll down and click privacy settings. Next to “How Tags Work,” click edit settings, and turn on Profile Review and Tag Review. That’s it!

Controlling your online persona is very important nowadays, with possible employers, scholarship committees, and schools doing online background checks. So these new policies are amazing, especially for a college student. My hat is off to Mark Zuckerberg.

You can even choose who you want to share each individual status, photo, really anything with. I’m impressed with the people at Facebook and how adamant they are at addressing all the issues their users have brought to their attention. “You have told us that ‘who can see this?’ could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward,” said Chris Cox, the Vice President of Product at Facebook.

The people at Facebook are always looking for a new way to make their users’ lives easier. Mark Zukerberg, the creator of Facebook if you didn’t already know, is ranked on #52 on Forbes’ list of Billionaires, #19 in the United States’ billionaires list, #35 on Forbes 400, and the 40th most powerful person in 2011 for a reason. Facebook is an ever evolving, innovative, and always progressing enterprise and because of this, unlike its predecessor MySpace, it isn’t going anywhere. Now, it they would just eliminate poking, the world we be perfect…

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