Facebook is packing movies, music, news and digital books into overhauled profile pages crafted to serve as online homes for members of the world’s largest social network.
Major changes being rolled out in the coming weeks will let members discover and share media content in real time, while also artfully chronicling their lives.
Facebook on Thursday introduced a new class of “open graph” applications that let people discover and share music, movies, books and news as well as seemingly lightweight experiences like bicycle rides.
Photo: AFP
The applications will be integrated into overhauled “Timeline” profile pages that let people digitally map everything they’ve ever done.
“The heart of your Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said while announcing the overhaul at Facebook’s annual f8 developers conference.
“Timeline is the story of your life,” he said.
The new applications will let members automatically allow chosen friends to see their news feeds without needing to click “Like” or “Share.”
Digital music service Spotify will let Facebook users see what friends are listening to at any moment in “Ticker” real-time feeds and then click to listen along. The same principle will apply to computer or mobile gadget applications and the feature will extend to digital books, news and films.
“Now, you don’t just have to ‘Like’ a book, you can read it,” Spotify chief content officer Ken Parks said. “You can connect to anything you want; it’s simple, but it is really powerful.”
Zuckerberg demonstrated the Timeline by showing how his new profile page brought together everything from baby photos to pictures from his meeting with US President Barack Obama in April.
“The biggest challenge was to tell the story of your life in a single page,” Zuckerberg said. “What Timeline does is show all the recent activity and then, as you go back in time, it starts summarizing the things you’ve done in your life.”
Facebook has no plans for an “app store” along the lines of the one run by Apple at its online iTunes shop. Instead, it will leave it to members to spread media sharing applications.
People will need to install third party applications to share snippets in Timeline profile pages, which will feature privacy controls. Applications will also require people to set data sharing “permissions” before they are used.
Partners ready with “open graph” applications include online streaming video services Netflix and Hulu.
Applications were also available to deliver and share news stories from sources including Yahoo, the Washington Post and the Daily.
“I think it has the potential to not only rethink the way we read news, but rethink the way the whole news industry works,” Zuckerberg said.
News Corp is releasing the Web app version of the Daily only in Facebook because it believes in the power of people reading stories recommended by friends, Zuckerberg added.
“Facebook is positioning itself as not just your social graph online, but your life online,” Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran said. “These changes not only help trump rival Google, but will open up new opportunities for marketers with new kinds of customer experiences, long-term engagement, advertising and customer intelligence.”
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook hit a new milestone this month with 500 million people using the social network in a single day, according to Zuckerberg.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US