I’ve been reading tons of articles about yesterday’s Facebook announcements and have been trying to digest them. What has been most amazing is the wide range of semi-accurate reporting taking place. For example, Brendan Gahan at Gigaom inaccurately states that, “In another move that mimics the Twitter functionality, Facebook announced that from now on there will no longer be a limit to the number of friends a user can have (the previous limit was 5,000). There will also no longer be Facebook ‘Pages’ everyone will have profiles instead.”

I can understand why Brendan perceived that to be the case and I can also understand that some of these announcements do more to confuse companies then help them even though many of the changes were made with benevolent intentions. So what exactly are the primary changes and why are some of them being so misconstrued? Also, were these updates a move against Twitter, FriendFeed, or none of the above?



Why Did Facebook Update the Pages Product?

The first thing that many people are wondering is why on earth did Facebook update the Pages products when there were thousands of businesses functioning under the existing design? While it wasn’t clearly articulated to brands, this was simply part of the Facebook pages evolution. When Facebook redesigned the site, they did not redesign the Pages product. This redesign was a way to bring it up to par with the other products.

What Are the Benefits of the New Pages?

With the upgrade in designs comes a few new features. There is one feature (or upgrade) that’s most significant which is that all information posted to a Page’s stream (aka “Feed”) will go out to a user’s feed. This gives brands much greater exposure within the feed in general. That information also includes status updates which were previously not available to Pages.

The Friend Limit Has Not Been Removed

Dubbed the “Mike Arrington” feature yesterday by Chris Cox, this was presented as a way to open up specific information within a profile to the public. This is not immediately happening. Instead, Mike Arrington is being encouraged to create a “Page” not a “profile” where he can post information that will enter users’ feeds. Are you confused still? We can understand why!

According to Facebook, “Chris Cox jokingly referred to the fact that at some point, user profiles will have the ability to share with more than 5,000 people. This is not available right now, just the direciton in which we are heading.”

Why Do Users Now Land On My Feed Instead of Information About My Product?

Many individuals that I’ve spoken to have complained that they invested time and effort to create a nice landing page with activities for users to engage in and now that time has gone to waste. Ultimately, the time has not gone to waste and page administrators can choose which tab new visitors and fans land on.

This means that if you’d like to have a custom HTML landing page that all new visitors of your Page view on their first visit, you can now control that.

Is This A Move Against Twitter?

Yes, Facebook has tried to acquire Twitter and now they are opening up even more but not all of these changes are a significant shot at Twitter. People keep referencing Twitter’s streaming feed, which as far as I know, still is not streaming (unless of course you are using TweetDeck, Twhirl, or any other add-on). Facebook also invented the feed so it’s hard to say that Facebook’s redesigned homepage is a direct shot at Twitter.

Is This A Move Against FriendFeed?

Yes! Well it isn’t really a move directly against FriendFeed necessarily, but Facebook clearly lifted a lot of the features and layout that FriendFeed currently provides. Many of the features that Facebook previously had on their homepage feed is still there except this time around, the filters are a bit more prevalent.