How Facebook is about to change even more

Friday, September 23, 2011

How Facebook is about to change even more

Friday, September 23, 2011 ANSOR No comments

Facebooka

Previously published at 7:30 a.m. PT/10:30 a.m. ETa

Facebook gave its News Feed a makeover Wednesday and many users got angry. How dare the social network suddenly change so much, after all? Well, we hope you saved some of your rage — because a lot more changes are going to be announced at F8, Facebook's developer conference, today.a

The official announcements will start trickling in once Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage to give his keynote speech at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET, but there are already a lot of whispers regarding what's coming.a

One of the key hints about all the announcements is F8's motto, which All Things D's Liz Gannes reports is "Read. Watch. Listen." This leaves us expecting a new way to consume text-based news, some sort of video component, and the long-rumored incorporation of music streaming.a

When it comes to the "Read" element of the F8 motto, there's not much mystery regarding what's coming. We know that Facebook wants to “act more like your own personal newspaper” and once it altered the News Feed to present your Friends' posts in what it believes is a better format, the next natural step is to tackle news from the world at large.a

Thanks to Forbes' Jeff Bercovici, we know that the company is partnering with various media outlets — including CNN, the Washington Post and The Daily — in order to create Facebook apps designed to change the way you access and consume news. The Wall Street Journal has even alreadyprovided a sneak peek of what its own app. We're expecting to see demonstrations of several similar apps at F8.a

While the "Watch" portion of the F8 motto has gotten a bit less attention,The Guardian suggests that it is related to film streaming services which will be incorporated into Facebook in a similar way to music services.a

And thanks to a Facebook employee's Twitter slip up, we've got a pretty decent idea of how those music services will fit into the social network's "Listen" theme.a

TechCrunch reports that creative director Ji Lee got a bit too excited and tweeted "The 'Listen with your friend' feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE." last evening.a

How does that tweet reveal much about the music integration? Well,GigaOm reported that Facebook was in negotiations with Spotify and several other music services earlier this year. If we combine that knowledge with Lee's tweet, we come to the same conclusion as TechCrunch's MG Siegler:a

Lee is describing a key feature of Facebook Music launching [Thursday]. Not only will all music you’re listening to appear in the just-launched right-side ticker, there will be a link to “Listen with your friend”, that when clicked, will allow you to listen along to the same song at the same time (thanks to the magic of scrobbling and track matching).a

We hope this idea is on the right track — because it would give the much disliked new right-side ticker a purpose other than to rile up Facebook users.a

That speculation covers F8's three-word motto, but we're certain that it doesn't even begin to cover everything Facebook intends to announce later in the day — and Mashable's Ben Parr agrees. He suggests that the social network probably also has plans to unveil something related to e-commerce. (We wonder if this potential announcement will explain the demise of Facebook Deals.)a

We're going to keep a close eye on F8 news to see if all these leads pan out, and keep you posted on all the craziness. But if you're interested in watching all the excitement yourself, Facebook is offering a live stream of the conference right here.a