Facebook introduces Timeline and many other new features!

Lots of new features appeared this week on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg did not stop in a so good way and announced extra new features at the f8 which was took place in San Francisco.

Facebook has now more than 800 million active users per month, 350 million of them use their mobile phone to connect! All this information is available on the official statistics page that has been updated yesterday.

Nice surprise for those users: Facebook offer them a whole new profile pages: the Timeline. On September 30, everyone will have access to this new feature. Timeline enables users to have a real time curve on their personal page. We can then easily see the highlights of the life of a person from her registration on Facebook and even from birth. The presentation has been completely changed and many things like photos, videos, and status updates are displayed according to the date they were added to the profile. Some new items also appear: the maps where we can see where a person checked-in, and special spaces where we can know which pages this person is a fan of and even what applications shes used in the past. To be informed about the public availability of this real online autobiography see the dedicated page on Facebook!

Applications are implemented in a much more important way in the new profiles. Facebook has now partnerships with major companies working in the web and multimedia allowing more social interactions between brands and users. here is an example: If one of your friends listen to a song on Spotify, a message will be pushed on his profile and on the newsfeed that will allow you to click to listen to this very same song. Your mutual friends will be able to see that you are two people to listen to this music at the same time giving a further dimension to social recommendation! Facebook also improved this system by adding new verbs in addition to the famous « like »: say welcome to « is listening to » or « cook ». You can find all the information you need about the new Social Graph in the developers section of Facebook.

This is a real opportunity for brands to create more social connections with users. We can imagine that Facebook could make it possible to publish this kind of messages in your newsfeed: « Pierrick is at McDonald’s Champs-Elysees Paris and ordered a Big Mac. » This will be a direct recommendation of this person to his friends on Facebook, almost becoming an advice. In addition, the brands will be able to have more information about your lifestyle and consumption in order to create ads with an optimal targeting and offer products or services closer to your needs.

We can also easily imagine an overhaul of fan pages in the same style as the Timeline but adapted to businesses. This page could become a showcase of the brand while displaying its evolution over time. Users can still interact with the brand by posting comments or by liking the status updates. The tabs on the left would desappear, everything would be gathered within the page, then the brand will have to choose which items it wishes to put forward. For example, it could display a map with the location of its outlets or display an application (contests for example!) for users directly on the Timeline.

What do you think of these new features and the opportunities offered by them? Do you think the Timeline can be applied in on the brands fanpages?

Edit : The Timeline is a little late and should be available for everyone from 6th October.