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Today, Facebook released a system-wide upgrade that added a new Facebook on top of the current Facebook. This basically allowed real-time streaming of interactions of all social network.

They even moved toward a more unified top navigation bar, which oddly enough look slightly like Google’s new bar. We’re definitely seeing a one up-manship between these 2 companies.

Thinking about it further, what are the reasons for why Facebook would make this change? My guess is that Facebook wants to become a one-stop shop. What do I mean by this? Well essentially Facebook currently brings in revenue through ads, why is Facebook valued so highly by investors? its because in their databases they hold tons of data on a person, this is one step above Google, who controls web search, but the possibilities are limitless when you know what kinds of foods people like, what kind of bands, what kind of interests, sports, etc, AS well as all of this person’s friends and what they like. This is a advertising/marketing goldmine that will give much more directed/successful results.

If we look at history and just a non-scientific observation of my own browsing habits. I’m sure a lot of you also do the same thing, Gmail/GChat has become such a in-grained part of our life, that when we’re on a computer these things are loaded up, they are running constantly. The cool thing about these systems are that you never have to leave the browser. you are never clicking away from gmail. a new mail comes. boom. your mail list shows a new mail. Things happen real-time, it keeps me in one place, it retains my interest and I invest into it.

If you haven’t noticed, Google has already started to mine your email conversations, when you give a date, it’ll automatically show up a calendar event and ask if you want to create it, or if you say Coke, it might automatically show an ad for some other beverage on the side bar.

This is where Facebook is going. They want to capture your attention, keep you on one page, and capture all your interactions you will ever do with your friends and eventually use that data to sell you to the marketers. The new bar, some of the features include a “convenient” way of writing on your friends’ walls for their birthdays. I used to have to right-click to open these people into another tab, but now I’m more inclined to stay on this Facebook page, because I don’t have to navigate away from it. Other features include, mousing over a comment and being able to directly comment into the div that shows up. All these features are designed to keep the user on the same page, make things more convenient, and attempt to lock you into Facebook so that eventually you will not be able to live without it.

Those wall interactions between you and your friends? all captured in Facebooks databases. How often you communicate with someone else? those can be tracked based on how often you write on their wall, or send messages. Facebook can literally and probably already building a scary profile of exactly who you are.

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I’ve been playing with this concept of circles and I think I’ve gotten a good handle of it.

The difference between facebook and google+ is that now you can decide who you want to see your sharing. This is awesome in the sense that if I had a drunken picture and I didnt want my family or work people to see, then I would only select my select group of friends.

The problem is that with such granularity, its not so simple as just posting, Now you have to decide what you are sharing. In most cases, you would want to share to everyone, and only some things you need to be more private about.

So here is one way to create your circles:

1. All Friends (create a new circle)
2. Work (create a new circle)
3. Family
4. Social group 1 (create a new circle, name it what you want)
5. Social group 2 (create a new circle, name it what you want)
6. Social group 3 (create a new circle, name it what you want)

etc…

Its easy to move a single friend down to a circle, but after I’ve separated them into granular groups, how do i create an All Friends circle?


1. Click on the target circle (lets say social group 1) – this will bring up a modal with a list of friends. from here you cannot drag into your All Friends circle, so you want to choose “View circle in tab”


2. Now the friends all display in the top portion of your screen and you are able to drag them to your circles. Now from the More actions > Select all – this will select all your friends.


3. Now you can drag all those friends into your All Friends circle. Google is smart enough to ignore the ones that are already in that circle.

With this concept, you can create “super” groups of the more granular groups, so you dont have to keep selecting multiple granular groups everytime you want to share to more people.

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Everyone knows that google has pacman, but did you know that if you hit insert coin twice, you can play 2 player?

1st player
arrows

2nd player
up – w
down – s
left – a
right – d