Facebook's New Features Exposed Accidentally

Facebook accidentally went live with a handful of prototype features earlier today, including a site-wide yet short-lived overhaul of Pages.

Roughly 45 minutes after the mistaken update, Facebook disabled the site, reverted back to its previous state and then tweeted apologetically about the downtime. But that brief span of time was enough for Facebook members and Page admins to get a sneak peak at new features in the works.

Facebook admitted to pushing features before their time. “Also, some internal prototypes were exposed to people and resulted in us disabling the site briefly. It’s now back to normal,” read a tweet from Facebook.

So what were those prototypes exactly? Screenshots shared with us and surfaced through other media outlets suggest all of the following: new Facebook Pages (with Questions integration), a “Switch Accounts” feature for Page Admins, a new Memories feature that chronicles photos and status updates from years past and an “Outside World” filter for the News Feed.

What follows is a deeper look at what some Facebook users saw today.

Update: We’ve added two new prototypes to this post based on your comments: A lightbox UI for Photos and a comment box that no longer includes the “Comment” button.

Were you privy to these or other changes? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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New Facebook Pages

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Pages got a temporary facelift with a tab-free design — the navigation instead being placed on the left-hand side of the Page — that more closely resembles Facebook Place Pages and member Profiles. We also noticed that Questions were integrated into the Pages experience and that Facebook introduced a “Switch Accounts” feature for Page admins.

We initially thought it strange that new Facebook Pages would be released without an announcement from Facebook. Commenters agreed; many of you expressed displeasure at the idea that would Facebook would overhaul Pages without notifying you of the changes first.

When pressed for clarification specifically around Pages, a Facebook spokesperson shared the following statement: “While we are always experimenting with new features internally we are not making changes to Pages right now. Organizations invest a lot of time on their Facebook Pages because millions of people find them useful everyday. We remain committed to providing ways for Page owners to customize and control the experience on their Page. If we do make changes, we will provide partners with advance notice.”

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Memories

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Several users reported having access to a new “Memories” option listed below Photos in the left-hand menu on their Profile Pages.

A Mashable commenter said of the feature, “I was online during the glitch and also saw a new MEMORIES link under my profile pic. It’s gone now but I did get a sneak peek while it lasted. It allowed you to look back at status updates, photos, and new friends…giving a snapshot of each year I’ve been on FB.”

The Next Web reporter Courtney Boyd Myers saw the Memories option and described it in a similar fashion. “It showed options for jumping to photos grouped by years: 2010, 2009, 2008, etc. with complementing information like status dated status updates, the number of friends added per year, events attended and Facebook places check-ins,” she wrote.

Memories would make for a pleasant (hopefully) walk down memory lane, so we hope this features finds its way back to Profile Pages in the near future.

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Outside World News Feed Filter

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We also found some evidence that Facebook may still be testing a filter for the News Feed called “Outside World.” Twitter user @casschin posted a TwitPic of the filter that shows the News Feed with a Most Recent drop-down menu that includes “Outside World” as a filter.

FBHive first unearthed the filter back in 2009 and speculated that it was an RSS-like option for the News Feed. At the time, TechCrunch confirmed with Facebook that the filter was for internal staffers only. We’re not quite sure to make of this one just yet.

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Photos Lightbox UI

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Several commenters have said they also saw the lightbox UI for Facebook Photos, albeit with a few bugs. The photo included here comes courtesy of Mashable reader Andrew Mrozkowski.

The feature was first previewed when Facebook upgraded Photos two months ago. “Any time you click on an image anywhere on Facebook, be it in an album or in your News Feed or on a friend’s Wall, you’ll see a black box hovering over the rest of the screen with some minimal navigation controls and relevant social features, allowing you to concentrate completely on the image at hand,” said Mashable reporter Jolie O’Dell at the time.

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Removal of “Comment” Button from Comment Box

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Facebook may have pushed a premature update to comment boxes earlier today, according to Mashablereaders. Readers are reporting that comment boxes temporarily mirrored those in the new Facebook Groups product and did not have the “Comment” button. Without the button, a user simply needs to hit the Enter/Return key to submit his comment.

The screenshot above is merely a mock up, but these reports sound about right. Facebook consistently updates older products to match the style of its newer ones.

Hat tip to Long Nguyen, Dep and the rest of our astute readers on this find.

Images courtesy of TwitPic, ZDNet, casschin

source: Mashable

Facebook Photos and Facial Recognition Technology

Facebook Photos, one of the social network’s most popular features, is getting a big and potentially controversial upgrade with a new feature that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos based on facial recognition technology.

The new feature, Tag Suggestions, will begin rolling out to U.S. users next week, according to Facebook Vice President of Product Chris Cox. He told us that the product utilizes technology that was built in-house, as well as some technology that came from partners. 

Tag Suggestions is fairly straightforward. Whenever you’re offered the chance to tag groups of your friends in an album, Facebook will utilize its facial recognition technology to group similar faces together and automatically suggest the friend you should tag them with. As you can see in the screenshot below, Facebook fills in the “Who is this?” box with its suggestion — all you have to do is click the “Save Tags” button to accept.

Cox says that suggestions will only appear when its algorithms have “high confidence” of who’s being suggested. Unlike Face.com, Facebook doesn’t reveal its certainty level and wouldn’t reveal what percentage actually correlates to “high confidence.”

The social giant is also preemptively addressing the potential privacy issues that will be brought up from automatic, algorithmic tagging. Users can opt out of Tag Suggestions by going to their privacy settings and disabling the “Suggest photos of me to friends” feature.

This release is part of a bigger effort to upgrade Photos. Earlier this year, Facebook launched a slew of upgrades, including bigger thumbnails, group tagging and drag-and-drop photos.

This may be the biggest upgrade for Photos yet, though. Photo tagging is considered a chore by many users, yet it is the company’s most popular product. “Photos are by far the most engaging content Facebook has ever had,” Cox told us earlier today. By vastly simplifying the tagging process, Facebook expects that its millions of users will tag more photos, which will create millions of new engagement points and social connections, making it that much more addicting. source: Mashable

Facebook Status Tips and Tricks

With Facebook’s ever-changing layout, and the fact that other social sites are encroaching on its real-time update strangle-hold, it’s easy to forget that there are some pretty nifty tricks you can pull using your humble Facebook status.

We’ve pulled together 10 great how-to tips that will help you get the most out of your status update, from official features to apps, Easter eggs, jokes and more.

Perfect for newer Facebook users, or anyone who is looking for a refresher, read on and let us know the ones you like in the comments below.

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1. HOW TO: Add a Dislike Option to Your Status Update

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“Like” buttons are everywhere on Facebook, and they’re everywhere on the web. But what if you want to update your status or share something that your friends can “dislike?” We know, your friends can choose to “comment” on your post, but where’s the fun in that?

The clever Status Magic Facebook app can add a dislike button to any status updates posted via the app. And if you wanted to really mix it up you can actually customize the second emotion to anything, such as “love,” “hate,” “disagree” or even “LOLs.”

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2. HOW TO: Hide Status Updates From Certain People

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Using Facebook’s general privacy settings (find these by hitting “account” on the top right of a Facebook page) you can select whether everyone, just friends or friends of friends can see your status updates. However, there is a way to narrow those options down even further.

You can select specific friend lists to see your status (relevant for work, special interest groups, etc.) or even individual people by name, which is useful for anyone organizing a surprise party.

To take advantage of these options, click the padlock icon just below your “what’s on your mind” box on your wall and a drop down menu should appear. Selecting “customize” will bring up more options such as “make this visible to” and “hide from” with the option to make your selection a default.

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3. HOW TO: Pre-Schedule Status Updates

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While SocialOomph, Sendible and HootSuiteHootSuite offer the same kind of service, the simplest way to schedule Facebook status updates is by using the easy, free Later Bro service.

Just sign in with Facebook Connect, select your time zone, type in what it is you’d like to say, set the calendar and clock to when you’d like to say it, and presto!

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4. HOW TO: Tag People in Your Status Updates

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This was quite a big deal when it was announced this past September, but from the amount of searches on the topic “how can I make someone’s name go blue in a Facebook status?” it seems it’s not universally known.

To mention someone in a status update just type “@” (a la TwitterTwitter) in the status bar and start typing their name as it appears on Facebook. An auto-generated list will then come up with people in your social circle whose name starts with the letters you’ve typed. The feature also works with pages, brands, events and companies.

Hit the name you want, complete the update, click share and the name will become a hyperlink (you won’t see the @ symbol) and will appear in blue text.

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5. HOW TO: Add Symbols to Your Facebook Status

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Although there are plenty of emoticons that work with Facebook Chat, typing “:)” into Facebook’s status bar will not magically transform into a smiley yellow face. In fact, the only symbol you can create in a Facebook status update through the shortcut keys is a ♥, by typing “<3."

While this won't bother many Facebook users, others more used to punctuating their missives can copy and paste web-happy, universal symbols into the box, as you can see in the screengrab above.

PC users can also access some symbols by hitting “alt” + various number combinations (on a numerical keypad). So, while smileys are yet to hit Facebook statuses, you can annoy or amuse your buddies with symbols right now.

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6. HOW TO: Turn Your Status Updates Into a Word Cloud

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There’s a really fun way to visualize anyone’s status updates (even an entire country’s) as a word cloud. TheStatus Analyzer 3D app will look at what it is you’ve been chatting about lately and generate a list, and then a pretty, colorful, animated cloud as pictured above.

You can share the results with others on the social networking site by posting it to your friends’ walls or by adding it to your profile.

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7. HOW TO: Have Fun With Facebook’s Humorous Language Options

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While you can always change your setting into more sensible alternative languages, the site offers a couple of fun linguistic Easter eggs.

You can chose to have Facebook display upside down English, or, for anyone feeling a little salty, in “pirate.” Pirate essentially turns your status into your “plank,” your attachments into “loot” and instead of “share” it offers the option to “blabber t’ yer mates.”

Sadly, anything you type in the status bar won’t be upside down, or pirate-y. But with the use of some external sites you can achieve the same effect.

TypeUpsideDown.com and UpsideDownText.com are just two examples of sites that can flip your text, while the Talk Like a Pirate Day site can help you with your pirate translations.

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8. HOW TO: See Status Updates From Around the World

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If you want to get a glimpse of the thoughts of Facebook users from around the world’s, head over toOpenBook.

Created by three San Fran web developers with a serious privacy message in mind, the site aggregates the status updates of everyone whose privacy levels are set to “everyone.”

You can narrow your searchable results down by gender and keywords to find out what people are saying about a certain topic. Or you can just browse the recent searches.

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9. HOW TO: See Your Status Update Stats

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Have you ever wondered how many times you have updated your status on Facebook? The Facebook appStatus Statistics, can tell you this and more.

The app analyzes your updates and gives you a tidy list of how many you’ve written, the average word count and how many times a day you post. In addition, it generates a graph that shows you what time of day or what days of the week you normally update.

Old statuses are also searchable via the app, so you can find that witty retort you made back in November 2009 without having to scroll back through your history.

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10. HOW TO: Play a Trick On Your Friends in Your Status Update

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We have a funny one to end on — a way to play an amusing trick on your Facebook buddies.

This clever link “http://facebook.com/profile.php?=73322363″ looks like it could be a URL for anyone’s Facebook profile, actually takes anyone logged into Facebook to their own profile page.

If you try it out, be sure to remove the link preview that Facebook auto-ads. Have fun, and don’t be too mean…

Source: Mashable