Facebook Launches Pages Redesign

Facebook has begun rolling out a full redesign of Facebook Pages. The changes will make the Pages look and operate more like user profiles.

The new Pages redesign was first seen in December, when Facebook accidentally launched it and quickly took it down. The update not only removed tabs, but it gave page admins the ability to post and comment on other Facebook Pages through a “Login as Page” feature.

Those prototype features have made the cut for today’s launch. As Facebook’s Rohit Dhawan, the lead product manager for Facebook Pages, explained to me earlier today, the company has wanted to redesign Facebook Pages ever since it launched the profile redesign. “We strongly believe you should have consistent experiences when possible,” Dhawan said.

The big difference everyone will notice will be the new layout. The left-hand menu for editing pages has been removed in favor of a new navigation menu that replaces the old tabbing system. And like the Facebook Profiles redesign, the left-hand “Information” box is also gone. However, page admins can now add info about their brand at the top of the page under the main title.

The right-hand menu has also been tweaked. There is now a section that features the page’s admins (if you so choose) as well as a section that shows users how many of their friends have also “liked” that particular page. Finally, just like profiles, a page can now feature relevant photos at the top. This could lead to some very creative uses for Facebook Pages.

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Log In As Your Facebook Page

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There are some other notable differences between the new Facebook Pages and the old version, especially for page admins. The “Login as Page” feature gives admins the ability to interact with the rest of Facebook as a page, not an individual. For example, I could log in as Mashable and start commenting and “liking” things on Facebook Pages that have “liked” Mashable. Admins will also see a different News Feed if they are logged in as their page; It will display the most important news from the pages you’ve “liked.”

“A page can now use Facebook as if they were an individual with the ability to interact with other pages,” Dhawan said. “It provides interesting content when people are visiting the page. ”

Pages can’t do everything a user can, though. Most importantly, they cannot post on a user’s wall or comment on his or her status. The lone exception is for a user who has opted for the “everybody” privacy setting; Pages can comment on status updates for those individuals.

The other update Facebook is adding is an “Everyone” filter that brings the most interesting and engaging posts from a page’s community to the top of the page. This makes it easier for users and admins to easily find the most “liked” and commented conversations on a particular page. The new Facebook Pages are also smart enough to filter out posts that are not in a language you speak.

The new design launches today as a preview for Facebook Page admins. Before switching, they can check to see what their page will look like and tweak elements of the design before launch. The company is also releasing a Page Tour and a manual to explain the new design. Admins will have until March 10 to switch over though, before Facebook automatically updates every page to the new design.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/02/10/facebook-pages-redesign-2/

Is Reddit on the Rise?

Reddit has announced some small but significant staffing changes today, causing us to ponder the big picture for the little link-sharing app that could.
As longtime rival Digg takes a Titanic-like nosedive into the freezing waters of the Internet, hemorrhaging staff along the way, Reddit claims things are going swimmingly.
Today, the small team, which was acquired by publishing behemoth Condé Nast in 2006, has just announced a couple new hires and says it will be hiring more engineers shortly. The company will now include a new back-end engineer and a new sales rep, as well as a couple redditors who will be working as part-time support staff.
But you may recall things were not so rosy for Reddit in the quite recent past. Just six months ago, the site was forced to adopt a freemium model to keep itself in business. At the time, Reddit staffer Mike Schiraldi wrote,

“Whenever this topic comes up on the site, someone always posts a comment about how Reddit is owned by Condé Nast, a billion-dollar corporation… and how if they wanted to they could hire a thousand engineers and purchase a million dollars worth of heavy iron. But here’s the thing: corporations aren’t run like charities. They keep separate budgets for each business line, and usually allocate resources proportionate to revenue. And Reddit’s revenue isn’t great.”

Clearly, times have changed since those words were penned last year. For one thing, the freemium features, dubbed Reddit Gold, were considered a huge success by the company.
Also, since then, the site has grown to more than one billion pageviews per month. That figure represented a 300% year-over-year increase.
This kind of traffic growth has helped the site lure “big-ticket” advertisers, according to site admins; another rising source of revenue is the site’s sponsored link system, which is used to promote SMBs, startups, blog posts, YouTube videos and other kinds of content. And Reddit Gold continues to be a success, too.
It’s interesting to watch this company — which without doubt was smaller than Digg as far as staff was concerned and which never drove the same masses of lemming-like traffic to publisher sites the way Digg did — succeed even as Digg falters. Perhaps this is a real-life example of a slower, steadier web app winning the race.

Source:  http://mashable.com/2011/02/08/reddit-hires/