I was greeted with an invitation to install the new Facebook Toolbar (Firefox only). I must say, this is exactly what I needed. I wrote earlier about how to eliminate distractions and this is, ironically, a great way to do it. You don’t spend countless times during the day logging in to see if there is something new worth looking at (which means less time mindlessly browsing). In theory, that is…
The toolbar, like Google’s or anyone else’s, is always there showing you only what you want. It’s easy enough to customize (under Quick Links). The bar itself is broken down into just a few select features.
Quick Links
Perfect. Instead of taking two pages (Login then Home) to get to My Photos it can now be done in one click. The same is said for the rest of the major Facebook sections.
Search Facebook
I find it funny the number of times I jump on Facebook to find someone’s contact information. What’s even funnier is the times I use it to find out more about people I’ve just met (or will be interviewing on Friday).
Share on Facebook
I already had the bookmarklet installed so by creating a nice button specifically for sharing, well, it’s exactly what I’ve been needing this whole time.
Notifications
This I think is really interesting. As soon as someone changes something (ie: status changed) it’s pushed straight to the toolbar. You can get a little popup that tells you ‘John is now excited for this weekend’s game’ or ‘Mary just changed her profile picture’. If you’re on a Mac and you have Growl installed it even includes that functionality as well.
Facebook Sidebar
Instead of visiting Facebook just to see whats new with your friends you can turn on the Facebook Sidebar (sorted by status updates or name) and find everyone. I don’t see this feature very useful, it’s not practical to scroll through a few hundred friends; I’d rather just type their name in the search bar.
What’s missing?
I need to see my upcoming events, for one. I’d also like to be able to poke back right from the toolbar. Additionally, I need a setting for links (send a message, poke, etc.) to either open in my current window or a new window/tab. But these are all minor things for now..
Either way, there’s little need to visit Facebook anymore. What will that mean for advertisers? How will new sponsored groups get advertised? Will we see advertisers in our notifications? Or will they use the information to better know us (like Google)? In any case, I expect the features to be expanded- it’s a good start.
I just installed it and its sooo much better than google and yahoo toolbars lolz
but im digging the sidebar thing it shows a live status of my friends the sad thing is, i dont know most of them
Hmm, yeah I guess the sidebar could be useful for that. To your second point, I actually sat down one day and updated the ‘how you know the person’ information and removed people who weren’t really friends. It’s made my Facebook experience much more valuable. ;)
Eh, this is kinda cool, but I think they could have worked on it a little longer. I keep getting notifications that “Blah Blah is now your friend” when they’ve been on my friends list for a year? Also hopefully it doesn’t notify me 5 times a day that a friend of mine joined some random group 2 weeks ago like the newsfeed does.
Odd, I haven’t noticed that over here. Do you have to login every session just like Facebook.com? That’s what annoys me the most right now.
Yeah I wish they handled that better and made sure it kept you logged in all the time (or at least a week at a time or something) and from multiple locations. Luckily firefox saves passwords so I don’t have to type in the login information every time, but still..
I think the notification popup stays up for too short period of time. I can barely notice what it says and once it’s gone, there is no way to bring the information back. I wish it stayed up until it’s closed manually.
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