It’s been a few weeks now since Facebook drastically changed some of their designs. Now I’ve liked Google+ since its launch, so it may come as no surprise that my use of Facebook has dwindled ever since. However, I feel it also has a lot to do with the changes implemented by Facebook at the end of September 2011.

An overhaul was directed at the News Feed and the Wall, which turned into the Timeline. Whereas one could first choose between important and most recent stories, it now featured a default layout preferring ‘Top Stories’ while relegating the Recent Posts to second fiddle. As I started using it, I was initially confused by the Top Stories. It seemed to imply these stories were the cream of the crop and Facebook was somehow applying a filter to decide what was important.

As such, I started curating my own posts a bit, as they were always showing up as Top Stories in both the News Feed and my Timeline, regardless of importance. Before long I realised I was overestimating the entire concept. It wasn’t a place to curate; it was just your Wall in a different shape. As that wall came tumbling down (no pun intended), the Top Stories in my News Feed became even more annoying.

Recent no more

Facebook marking everything as a Top Story on my Timeline was at direct odds with the News Feed still picking specific Top Stories from users as ‘more important’. The discrepancy between the two shattered the concept. Really, if all your own posts are Top Stories, how on Earth can you then expect those of your friends to be true to the term?

By moving away from what was current and new, by permanently delegating the Most Recent post to the bottom of the News Feed, Facebook takes control over what is regarded as important. As such, the relevancy of the posts in the News Feed was dwindling fast.

Add to that the annoying News Ticker that takes the concept of Most Recent to the opposite extreme and it becomes a mess. Yes, I want to know which posts a friend shared, but no, I do not want to know which six Pages he or she liked in quick succession.

Obfuscation

It’s hard to imagine this was Facebook’s goal. It has obfuscated information in such a way that it is not making any sense anymore. The News Feed and Ticker have made everything that happens on Facebook more detached. Whereas previously every action seemed to be initiated by users, it now feels like every action is processed first. Sure, you’re still allowed to know what your friend shared, but it will shine only if Facebook deems it worthy. Otherwise you need to dig around for it.

Which completely defeats the purpose of sharing information in the first place.

I can still look at the Timeline and marvel at the fact this was designed by an infographic master as it’s a jumbled mess of posts. The only thing that seems to have actually added to the experience is the Cover Image. But everything below it has become a blur.

They might have shot themselves in the foot here. The concept of frictionless sharing seems to further deteriorate the entire endeavour. Sharing an article is based on whether or not you had a connection with it, whether you ‘liked’ it or not.

Losing relevancy

Frictionless sharing crucially undermines this concept; it pre-empts the decision to share, and just goes ahead with it. Even if you thought an article were crap, it still gets shared adding noise to your News Feed, News Ticker or Timeline. And even if someone else then reads that through your share and also thinks it’s crap, it will still get shared even further. That’s utterly bizarre.

Similar to the like-button Facebook is trying to remove the option to give a negative signal, to dislike something. Refraining from liking or sharing something was the last. If Facebook’s greatest triumph over Google was to be able to generate social relevance for search results, why on this bloody Earth would they want to introduce more noise to those results and skew them into lowering relevance?

Maybe Facebook is finally realising that its social search results aren’t generating them any direct income and, instead, they need to fall back to the bugbear of the ’00s that is the almighty page view and let partners pay for the pushed traffic

But if so, then we might as well nuke it from orbit. Just to be sure.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell

When you think of an important idea, and you don’t write it down, it kind of bangs around up there, taking up space and mental energy, because your mind recognizes it as important and doesn’t want to forget the important idea.

Fire Lion Metal Monkey Go!

Everybody has an opinion about Google+. People are falling over each other to provide meaning to Google’s new social network toy, especially in the aftermath of ‘failed’ experiments like Google Wave and Buzz. Some see it as a way of keeping Facebook from creating an identity monopoly, others claim it to be a Trojan horse for their web apps. My opinion about it? It’s still about plain old search.

Google is search, or rather getting the right information to the right person. Google+ is their ‘human algorithm’ solution to the problem and the reason they wanted to get into bed with Facebook in the first place. On Facebook you share information, creating this filter of information being shared constantly, going viral, and becoming important to people. It’s a powerful thing to tap into. But now look at Google+.

First of all you can group people into Circles. Circles can be anything, anything at all. To Google it doesn’t matter what kind of Circle you created, the only thing they are interested in is that this group of people somehow share a common trait. It doesn’t even matter what the trait is; these people are connected one way or the other.

After creating a few Circles you then share information, just like on Facebook. But the beauty of Circles means that you can share specific information with specific people. You wouldn’t want to bother your boss with your latest escapades in land of the drunks, but you do want him to know of that new upcoming convention.

In short, you are providing groups of people, sharing a certain trait with information relevant to them. You pre-filter information. And while the Circles in themselves don’t directly influence search, the combination of Circles and shared information, extrapolated against all the millions of Google+ users will provide Google with interesting results about what is relevant to people.

Add to that the new +1 button and suddenly, you are very clearly a part of Google Search. True, the +1 button in itself is not exactly working properly yet. There’s still this odd discrepancy between the +1 on web pages implying an association with the information compared to the +1 within Google+, implying a preference for the information instead.

But that doesn’t matter. In my opinion, it also won’t matter whether Google beats Facebook or not. It’s irrelevant. They just need a large enough group to extrapolate data from so they can improve their most important product. And it doesn’t even matter who that group is, because their Circles will separate the nerds from the geeks and the family and the friends and the co-workers. Whatever happens besides that is a bonus.

That, in a nutshell, is my opinion about what Google+ is. So, what’s yours?

This is kind of odd and maybe a turgid look into my psyche, but it made me smirk.

The beta for Swiftkey X is available for Android smartphones. It is a soft keyboard replacement that employs a word-prediction engine based upon your writings on Twitter, Gmail and Facebook. Which has an amusing side-effect.

Swiftkey X starts predicting the words even if there isn’t anything written yet. And then suggests a word after that, and after that… So what would happen if I let Swiftkey X ‘create’ an SMS based on its suggestions? This:

I am a beautiful person. The creator of the most fun board games, boeken, tijdschriften, boeken, tijdschriften, boeken, tijdschriften, boeken, tijdschriften, boeken, tijdschriften, boeken, tijdschriften… (it continues in this ‘loop’ for ever)

For those not proficient in Dutch, ‘boeken’ means ‘books’ and ‘tijdschriften’ magazines. I wonder if this is just an easter egg or a true analysis of my texts. In case of the latter, I think I might need some help…

Global Game Jam 2011 is over and together with my colleagues and chiptune-master Stu we created a fun little co-op shooter called APOCA as you can see above. Want to try it? You can download the Flash file at globalgamejam.org. I’d embed it, but as we wanted to join in with the Winnitron 1000 competition, the game runs at a 1024×768 resolution. Not exactly embed-friendly. :)

Enjoy and let me know what you think of it!