Facebook’s f8 Conference last Thursday showed the largest social network has some major changes in store for your profile. With that said, this week’s Mashup is going to catch you up to speed on what you will be seeing in the near feature with Facebook’s new profile layout, Timeline. We’ve also covered Facebook’s new partnerships with Spotify, Netflix and Hulu. In other news, Google+ is open to the public and has a bunch of new features and Foursquare hit 1 billion checkins. Well there it is. Enjoy and have a great week!
Meet Facebook’s New Profile Layout: ‘Timeline’
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Facebook’s got big things in store for your profile page. Good ol’ Mark Zuckerberg unveiled ‘Timeline,’ the new profile layout soon coming to your profile, at Facebook’s f8 conference last Thursday. Timeline is essentially a virtual scrapbook that dives into your past, highlighting important moments and digging up old Facebook activity. According to Zuckerberg,
Timeline is the story of your life…in a new way to express who you are.
The new layout will feature a dual column view with a large main column showcasing your latest updates and a smaller column on the right with easy navigation. Watch the video below to see Timeline in action.
Timeline shows everything you’ve shared on Facebook in reverse chronological order. If you have listed your high school or college graduation date, day you got married or when you started a new job, it will all show up in your Timeline automatically. You will then be allowed to go back and update each moment with captions and photos. Have something you don’t want to share from the past? Maybe those unflattering high school days or a *cough* kegger from college? Don’t worry, you can go ahead and delete those so your boss or friends don’t get a hold of them.
Timeline won’t be out for a few weeks, but you can start adding apps to your profile now. When it finally comes out, you’ll have the choice to publish it right away or play around with it a few days to review and edit it before you let it go live.
Can’t wait to get Timeline for your profile? With a little ambition and these hacking directions, you can be the first of your friends to feature the new layout on your page.
Hulu, Netflix and Spotify Partner with Facebook
Facebook is looking to be an entertainment hub. The first partners on board are music-sharing service Spotify and video-streaming services Hulu and Netflix. The services will be integrated into Facebook’s new timeline profiles and users will see links to the services when a friend listens to a song or watches a movie on them. The links will automatically generate after the user accepts permission to use the application. Mark Zuckerberg said that the updates will assist in “real-time serendipity” recommendations that spread virally through friends.
When friends click on these links they may automatically be signed up for a free trial from these services which may eventually ask for monthly fees. This is a great opportunity for these third party businesses to be involved with Facebook and have their content shared virally.
These services will be featured on a specified apps section of your timeline profile. Here’s a look at how social apps will be integrated on your page:
Google+ Open to Public and ‘Hangouts’
Early last week Google announced that Google+ was open to the general public. They didn’t have very long to ride the wave before Facebook came in and stole the show. However, Google+ is now out of field trial and mad 100 improvements during the time. Google VP in charge of Google+, Vic Gundotra, said during the field trial,
…we’ve listed and learned a great deal. We’re nowhere done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups.
The last nine of the 100 updates, changes and features added to the network were unveiled last Tuesday. One of the major improvements was the improved search, allowing users to search for others as well as posts and photos. Gundontra said,
With more than 1 billion items shared and received every day, we’re excited to see how search will connect people through their posts on Google+.
The multi-person chat component, Hangouts, was updated to include smartphone and tablet capabilities, for devices with front-facing cameras. Currently the feature is only available for Android devices, but will be updated on iOS soon.
You can now share you hangouts with the public with the “On Air” feature. Keep an eye out for these features too debut in the next week: screen sharing, Google Docs and sketchpad (a feature to “draw, doodle or scribble” with others).
Foursquare Hits 1 Billion Checkins
Whoever said geolocation would take off must certainly be embarrassed after hearing Foursquare just surpassed its one billionth checkin last week. That’s right, billion with a “B.” The app has grown from 100 million checkins in July of 2010 to doubling that by October of 2010. Foursquare cracked 750 million checkins this June. The location based app averages 3 million checkins a day and has 10+ million user accounts. Take a look at this video to see what a week’s worth of checkins looks like.
