Tech Korner: Facebook Rolls out new Changes

Have you noticed the new features in Facebook lately?  Facebook, in advance of their F8 developer conference, introduced a number of new features such as subscriptions, smart lists and video chat.

Subscriptions allow for one-way communication with people on Facebook.  It has been compared to Twitter’s Follow button.  It allows people to be more open to the world.  However, if you are concerned about privacy, there are many privacy options for subscriptions.  When you post something, you have the option of choosing who to share with.  Options include “Public”, “Friends”, and “Custom”.  Public means that you are sharing with everyone who is subscribed to you.  Friends means you are sharing with only people you have added as friends and have gone through the regular approval process of becoming friends.  Custom refers to advanced options for sharing such as choosing exactly who and who not to share with.  If you are subscribed to someone, they can’t see your posts, but you can see theirs, as long as they have set their privacy to Public.

To go along with subscriptions is something called Smart Lists.  Smart Lists are lists of friends that are automatically created based on specific criteria.  Some of the criteria include workplace, school and geographic area.  This feature allows you to keep things separate.  For instance, you could have a list for school, a list for work, and a list for close friends.  If you only want to see posts related to your friends, and not your coworkers, you could switch to the close friends list and see a customized news feed that includes only posts from people in your close friends list.  On the other hand, if you are at work and only want to see posts from your coworkers, you could switch to your work list.  You can also utilize lists in privacy settings.  If you only want to share something with your close friends, you can choose your close friends list from the sharing drop down menu to limit your post to only your close friends.  No one in your other groups will see the post.

Another new feature of Facebook is video calling.  You are now able to start a video call within Facebook.  The experience is similar to that of Skype, but you are able to talk to any of your Facebook friends, even if they aren’t on Skype.  The process of starting a video call is very simple, just visit their page, click the gear icon in the upper right corner and choose “Call” from the drop down menu.  The Call option is only available for people who are currently online and available, however.  It is required that a small plugin be installed in order to start video calling.  It takes about 3 clicks and 10 seconds to install.  It also doesn’t require a browser restart, which means you can start video calling within seconds of clicking the “Call” button.  There are some drawbacks, however.  There is no group video chat, which means you are limited to talking to one other person at one time.  Another drawback is that there are no special features.  Some of these features include screen sharing and file sharing.

Although some people might not like some of the new features of Facebook, some features could be very useful.