Friday, December 17, 2010

Facebook Friday: Update Oopsie Reveals Future of Facebook

The blogosphere was in a frenzy yesterday with the unceremonious and unexpected launch of Facebook's new features. There was just one slight problem...

The update wasn't supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, the new features were gone as quickly as they came, leaving the social media news giants scrambling to piece together what some off the changes were. Based on user comments and screenshots, a few things start to emerge:

  • The new Pages layout, which was revealed last week, is still set happen along with the ability to switch accounts at the click of a button.
  • There's a new RSS feed-like feature called "Outside World" to filter news outside of Facebook.
  • There's also a new "Memories" feature that is apparently a snapshot of status updates and new friends from previous years.
  • Photos are also getting upgraded with a Lightbox UI to better display photos. This feature has been alluded to before (back when Facebook upgraded its photo resolution capabilities).

Of course, because this was an accidental launch, well have no idea if/when these changes will officially take place.

But what we do know is that the old adage of "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" still rings true, because that accidental inch Facebook slipped up on has led to miles of content and speculation for blogs and news sites across the web.