Eyeing the kind of real-time functionality that a far smaller social networking tool provides, 175 million-user Facebook is redesigning its homepage and making it easier and faster for “friends” to find out what their online mates are doing.

 

This week, as Facebook (News - Alert) notified users that it would remake its homepage “to make it easier to understand what’s going on with the people you care about," company Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said status updates through his site would come in real-time, instead of every 10 minutes or so.

 

“With the new homepage, that will reflect a much faster flow of information,” Zuckerberg said.

 

Behind the changes, industry insiders such as NewsFactor.com’s Frederick Lane say, are concerns about Twitter’s surging popularity.

 

As Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com writes in an article published on The Washington Post’s Web site, Facebook is challenged with a task of blurring the difference between private profiles and public pages.

 

“The 5,000-friend limit will be dropped from the public pages,” Schonfeld reports. “Facebook doesn’t want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans. Up until now, Facebook Pages haven’t really been the place fans go to connect with their favorite celebrities or brands. For that, they’ve started going to Twitter, where they can get updates in real time.”

 

Given the new functionality, the timing couldn’t have been much better for companies such as TMCnet, which got into the Facebook game just two weeks ago with new functionality on its Web site that will allow visitors to connect to their Facebook accounts.

 

“Connect TMCnet with Facebook to interact with friends and share stories on Facebook through your Wall and friends’ News Feeds,” the company says. “The TMCnet Facebook connection will enhance users’ experience and how they use and interact with news supplied by TMCnet.”

 

Benefits in development include: access to premium content; automated sign-in for TMCnet blog comments; automated Facebook photo included with blog comments; seamless connection to TMCnet applications for iPhone and MobileTMCnet; automated access to free resources including white papers, webinars, podcasts; simplified process means elimination of multiple log-in names and passwords; and automatically posting one-line stories back to Facebook.

 

“Adding advantages for Facebook users to create an enhanced social interaction experience on TMCnet is another example of how we strive to incorporate new technologies, streamline applications and create user-friendly experiences to offer the ultimate one-stop shop for everything in communications and technology,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC (News - Alert) president, group publisher and editor-in-chief.

 

Here’s a peek at what Facebook’s “new” homepage will look like (click to enlarge image):

 

 

Facebook officials say changes will affect filters – so that users can stay updated on what the friends they care about are posting – and a so-called “stream,” which shows all posts from friends in real-time.

 

“This keeps you up to date on everything that’s happening,” company officials say. “You can control who appears here.”

 

community comments powered by Disqus