Banyan Branch

At Facebook’s annual developer conference yesterday, F8, CEO Mark Zuckerberg & team announced radical changes to how we see, use and interact in the social network. Over the next few weeks, users can expect to see a completely new profile interface as well as better integration with other things they read, watch, and listen to on the internet.

So what’s the hype? In sum, Facebook wants us to be able to tell our individual stories in a way we’ve never had before. But what will you see when Facebook rolls out their new features? In a quick snapshot, we’ll show you the three major elements of your new profile:

A new profile picture, Cover

One of the major elements of Facebook is the ability to share photos with your friends quickly and easily. Now, the first thing people will see when they visit your profile is a Cover. Just like sharing any other photo, you can upload a new image or choose one from your albums. Choose your cover wisely – it takes up most of the top of your profile, and at this point it isn’t resizable. Keep in mind, you’ve still got a profile picture – it just looks more like a badge now. Take a look at our art director Byron Gronseth‘s Cover:

A new way to tell our Story: Timeline

Rather than a stream of status and activity updates that usually get lost after a certain point in time, you’ll now be able to see your entire stream of Facebook activity in the new Timeline format. There’s a central line that runs from ‘Now’ all the way back to the year you were born, and yes, you can fill out all the years between your birth and joining Facebook. Blue dots on your Timeline signify major updates and events, and grey dots are less significant activities. To the right of your Cover, you can quickly toggle to different years and decades in your life. Don’t worry – you can hide or remove any activity or update you don’t want in your Timeline.

Facebook's example of Timeline & Stories

New Social Apps

Last year, the Facebook Connect button was announced at F8, allowing us to ‘like’ or share stories we read and things we liked on other sites on our Facebook profile in one easy click. Facebook’s Open Graph allows developers from startups, major corporations and those in between to create these integrated experiences between your activity on Facebook and elsewhere on the web. This year, Social Apps was announced. Social Apps can essentially follow our experiences on other sites and track them on our Facebook Timeline, giving our friends the ability to listen/watch/play along with us if they want. What does that mean? At F8, Zuckerberg enlisted the help of a few major Social Apps partners – Spotify, Hulu, Netflix, The Washington Post and others – to explain what this looks like. Take a look at Spotify’s video below:

Don’t forget what’s already changed this week: News Feed

Most users won’t see these new changes until next week. What they did get this week was an (improved?) News Feed. In a nutshell, Facebook intended to make it easier for you to see your top stories , recent and real-time stories in the same screen. Top Stories from those who rank high with you on EdgeRank appear at the top of your News Feed, Recent Stories appear further down your Feed, and a real-time ticker of most of your friends’ activity now sits on the right sidebar of your Feed. It seems some Facebook users are resistant to the change. We’ll see how they respond to all of the other changes next week.

What does this mean for businesses & brands?

At Banyan Branch, our work lies in working with brands on enhancing their Page experience for their fans. So far, it’s unclear if there will be any major changes to the interface of Facebook Pages soon. Facebook’s focus at F8 is clearly on the individual user, so any changes businesses make to their current presence in Facebook should be around this new individual user interface rather than changing up their Page. What’s that mean? Banyan president Blake Cahill was quoted in Forbes‘ article on what these user changes mean for advertisers. “A lot of these enhancements open up the visibility of people’s passions,” he said. “This should make it a lot easier to do ad targeting.” Forbes goes on to say that we’ll likely see more user engagement and the option of Social Ads (within your Timeline.) Page Insights are already available for Open Graph, but aren’t populating just yet.