Lately, there really doesn’t seem to be a day without the major social media and networking sites enhancing, tweaking or adding new features to existing services.
[Editor’s Note: A couple hours after this article was published about the Facebook Live Newsfeed feature, it suddenly disappeared. There still is nothing about the feature from Facebook’s Official Blog.]
Live full Facebook newsfeed alone on the left, above ‘friends available for chat’ list on the right.
For instance, Facebook recently surprised everyone by giving more control to users by allowing them to tweak their privacy settings, similar to Google+. If you are using Facebook at the moment, you will notice a completely new feature which may make gossiping easy, and hiding your activity less easy.
Above the Facebook Chat sidebar, one can see the new ‘newsfeed’ (I am not sure what it is called right now, as there no information anywhere on the web or even on the Facebook blog. The newsfeed is not static, and updates itself real time. This means, you may no longer need to go to your home page to check out the latest updates, news and who liked what. In fact, even if you choose to go offline on your Facebook chat, the updates just don’t stop coming in! As I notice, this includes all the status updates, comments that you make on your friends statuses and posts, and also various ‘likes’ that you may make.
The newsfeed also shows various uploads and comments that people in your friend list might make. If you asked me about what is g5reat about this, I would say it looks non-intrusive, stays in the background without being obvious, and also updates itself in real time. What I may not like is, people might find it easier to find my likes and dislikes in real time, even when I am not on Facebook. That may cause concerns to those who are worried about their privacy.
However, if you are planning to stay tuned to what is happening in your friends circle (pun intended), this seems more convenient than static statuses, comments and likes. I am sure it is possible to tweak your privacy settings with regards to the live Facebook newsfeed as well. There could be another side to it, which is to try and compete with Twitter with live news feeds and also to consolidate real-time information which can be seen right on above your Facebook chat-box.
Another reason why Facebook may have brought this to foray is because it may want its users to stay on the website for a longer time, instead of going to other websites for ‘newsfeeds’. If this is the case, Facebook may become a more personalized and close knit live newsfeed source than Twitter. However, Twitter remains different and can’t be compared as it is public and more of a public broadcaster than a close knit group that Facebook usually tends to be. Google+ may have to work its ass out to catch up with these new developments. We might just have to wait for a little while before we hear news from the insiders!
Screenshot courtesy of A.R.
