Adair Cameron

Facebook.com have taken yet another step towards dominating the world wide web. A couple of weeks ago we were treated to some Facebook social plugins which allowed websites across the world to simply embed useful plugins such as like buttons and comment system.

Now Facebook.com are asking users whether they’d like to make Facebook your homepage. Will it replace my beloved Google? No … but I can imagine many would when you consider some of the following official stats about Facebook.com:

People on Facebook

More than 400 million active users

50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

Average user has 130 friends

People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

So where can they go next?

The way I see it, Google must slightly worried by the possibility of that nice little search bar becoming not just a bar for your friends etc but a bar for a fully functional search engine! 

May be a little over the top but when Microsoft bought a $240m stake in Facebook.com back in 2007. Could this be the key to Bing catching Google up in the search engine market? Let’s hope not but Facebook.com certainly know how to build for the better! This would give users even more purpose to bookmarking Facebook.com as their homepage.

Do you think that Facebook.com will take on the search engines? Should they build their own or re-skin Bing.com?

On the 21st of April 2010, Facebook announced “The Next Evolution of Facebook Platform” at their third f8 conference. With this announcement came three new toys for all to play with; social plugins, the Open Graph Protocol & the Graph API.

The most noticeable of the three will be the introduction of social plugins which allow you to integrate your website with Facebook through just a few lines of code, these are;

• Like Button: The Like button lets users share pages from your site back to their Facebook profile with one click.
• Recommendations: The Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like.
• Login with Faces: The Login with Faces plugin shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button.
• Comments: The Comments plugin lets users comment on any piece of content on your site.
• Activity Feed: The Activity Feed plugin shows users what their friends are doing on your site through likes and comments.
• Like Box: The Like box enables users to like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website.
• Facepile: The Facepile plugin shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site.
• Live Stream: The Live Stream plugin lets your users share activity and comments in real-time as they interact during a live event.

How do Facebook Social plugins affect us

Out of the eight listed above, I am most intrigued by the like button & comments. Prior to Facebook Social plugins I would automatically look to embed TweetMeme and AddThis. Now I wouldn’t discount either of the two, instead I would provide more prominence towards the new like button along with TweetMeme, lowering AddThis to avoid clutter of social tools. 

The like button is a guaranteed winner for any website as it offers much exposure with minimal ask - which is one of the big factors as to why TweetMeme works so well. AddThis is a little bit more complicated and beginning to get a little too busy for its on good, however, at least it covers all other social platforms if needed.

When you consider that there are over 400 million active users on Facebook, the average user has 130 friends and users spend over 500 billion minutes per month on the worlds largest social network. To offer such an easy solution to like a page or a post is simple yet genius.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me if comments were to take over too. Whether it Wordpress with its built in comment platform or Tumblr making good use of Disqus. Facebook comments could far outdo the two combined but be cautious - consider your target audience. 

Where now for Facebook?

With these latest developments, Facebook will just continually grow and grow. The more exposure the like button will get on the web the faster Facebook will grow. Having such exposure on some of the worlds largest sites will more than likely pick up the pace towards a few new users! 

One question I’d like to know, is it possible for Facebook to reach 1 billion users?

Favourite thing about the facebook update - the header navigation design.

Something about the use of subtle background colours (#3B5998 & #627AAD). The icons & links fit perfectly with the height and the search bar given for more prominence in terms of position and width but still manages to not get in the way of the over design.

I’ve become a big fan of spotlight search since getting a mac and think it works perfectly with the search bar - have they reduced the font size slightly?

Interesting how just the other day Google appeared to have reduced the font size in Google Suggest - now a similar pattern is found with Facebook search!?! It wasn’t that long ago that search bars and spotlights were becoming big & bold.