the F rant

I read this post from my former colleague and all round good guy Steve Rubel: How to Bring Back the Old Facebook Feed – The Steve Rubel Lifestream .

I’ve added my two bob’s worth in a comment below (for those who would like to go back to the “old” Facebook news updates, it provides a how to)…

I quite like the “new” Facebook, because it allows three options.

1. News Feed
The “new” curated feed.

2. Live Feed
This option needs to be modified somewhat to get the “old functionality back. Simply click “Live Feed” and then go down to “Edit Options” down the bottom. Then change the number in the field from 50 to 5000. It will then provide a full live feed of everything your friends are doing on Facebook – from links to apps to status updates.

As a matter of interest – this is a key product offering in the battle of Facebook vs Twitter.  The new trend for search is “live discovery”, where people want to have instant results, updates and feeds.  We see it in Twitter, we’ve seen it with the new changes to Google’s realtime search results, where Google can provide searches that provide live updates to the second.

3. Status Updates
As you said in the post above, Steve…

The thing I don’t like is that Facebook hasn’t made it completely obvious how to do this, so people are confused.

FUTURE: Digital Media, Marketing, Insights and Trends change, facebook, live discovery, old, realtime search, social networking, status updates

Chris Berg from the IPA and I were sharing memes – regarding how short is the new long in the era of the attention crash.  We came up with a handful…  But I’m tempted to extend the list to the top ten signs that we’re losing our attention spans, signs that “short is the new long”.  Please feel free to contribute more:

1. Trailers are the new movies
2. 60 seconds is the new hour
3. Twitter is the new blog (a loud yelp is the new Twitter)
4. 150 word posts are the new novels
5. Status updates are the new dinner parties
6. A thorough Google search is the new Bachelor Degree
7. SMSs are the new phone calls
8. RSS feeds are the new newspapers (heaps of them)
9. The word “meh” is the new art of conversation
10. (And in Australian politics, with rationality out of the window): “temporary deficits” are the new “permanent surpluses”.

FREEDOM: Economics, Politics and Business, FUTURE: Digital Media, Marketing, Insights and Trends attention crash, attention span, list, meme, new, old, RSS