facebook | Devin Reams

As soon as I saw Facebook’s new “Ticker” (a.k.a. Facebook within Facebook) I wondered if Facebook was smart enough to “surface” the right stories to me. MG Siegler at TechCrunch:

But while all the competitors were busy making that button, Facebook was busy making the button obsolete. Today’s Open Graph changes represent a world where the button isn’t needed. Sure, it will continue to exist for certain types of content. But it will be more like an on/off switch.

Once I saw the long term plan (with the new Timeline), it became clear that the Ticker is the new Beacon. Facebook is told about everything you do. Then between a mix of curation (updating my Timeline) and algorithm (Facebook determining what is important) the stream of updates within Facebook will become meaningful again.

Or, at least, thats the hope.

When the new site design launched nobody realized that Facebook added the ‘Top Friends’ functionality:

I don’t see TechCrunch, Mashable, or anyone noticing this. But everyone was very quick to get upset when slide’s ‘Top Friends’ app was taken down (it was a legitimate security concern).

I hate this short-term-memory-loss-lynch-mob we like to call the internet. Uproar and knee jerk reactions over perfectly understandable non-issues. But no praise for the good anyone does. It seems the consensus is: “let’s move on to something else we can get upset about”. This is why Valleywag is dead. Nobody likes complainers. Do something about it. On the other hand, this is the same pandering nature that network news channels commit every day. The same ones that “we” bloggers say we’re up against.

Oh, and if you’re still reading and waiting for the punch-line, here you go. From the Facebook help page taken today:

The internet is weird.