There's a very common misunderstanding among normal users that websites can't really look different for different users. Facebook has corrected that a bit, users now know that features might be rolled out in stages, but they still cling to the misunderstanding that if someone has a feature, they will get it eventually.
And hence this article: Zuckerberg has extra features, therefore everyone will get these extra features. It's pure speculation. A more likely explanation is that he has a special version with a lot more controls that are relevant to him.
True, but... If there are thousands of prototype interfaces in review why is Zuck using this one? This is more of a fun "What if?" then anything else.
What if Facebook jumped into search in a big way?
What if people used Facebook Search while they are on Facebook instead of jumping over to Google?
What if every website could use a Facebook Search plugin?
Facebook knows if they want to beat The Street, now that they are going public, they need to crank up the revenue machine. They want to make more money to make better products. Banners are not doing that, but search and an advertising network that would compete with Google in a big way would help them turn their 850 million users into a revenue powerhouse.
It's all speculation, but I would say the search box getting larger (so as to look like Quora) does mean something, as in they might be pushing for search, which would be interesting.
yeah, the Quora idea is quite possible. Where search drives the interactions. As I wrote, search is something that’s totally under-realized on the Facebook platform. There is no way to search and filter content.
Wow, you don't use facebook. Good for you, But 500 million other people in the world do. That makes it a fairly big deal, love it or loath it. And as you so rightly just pointed out, this may in turn affect the way everyone else does business.
For me it didn't change my behavior, but that's not the point. I think the fact that Facebook may emphasize the search functionality more does mean something. As you know there's this thing called affordance.
Facebook's problem has always been that they are trying to convert passive users into active ones.
When you google for "watches", it makes sense to show you ads for watches; you've expressed your interest.
On facebook, you're interested in Fiona's party pics, not watches.
By increasing the focus on (social)search, FB are positioning themselves to take advantage of people expressing specific interests, instead of being as they currently are, passive users.
From what I've heard is that Facebook employees essentially used a custom Facebook that's integrated into their actual work and work environment. My guess would be is that is what we're seeing in this photo.
Would you really? Not sure about that, I imagine he believes in the public product. However, if something is being tested on his account, then it's possibly quite a strong contender for release(?)
I agree with youssefs, too. It makes sense that he would use something that everybody is using and testing the latest experiments on top of the public build.
At this stage nothing is leaking "accidentally". Facebook has gone through enough press cycles, feature releases, competitive responses, etc., that anything you are seeing is carefully crafted. Even if it has the look of an ad-hoc casual internal-only just-for-my-friends feel.
The userspace reactions to even minor changes and features are predictable.
This is a good catch. This is almost certainly a development version of facebook that gets rolled out internally before it hits the world, or even A/B testing.
