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Sharing a wonderful film or television series with friends is a great way to spark a conversation. Netflix Social brings that sharing to Facebook, eliminating one more reason to talk face-to-face with friends. On Wednesday Netflix began rolling out Netflix …

If you’re not the embrace change type, you’re going to throw another mini-fit today: Facebook is switching up the look of your profile. Again. Again, again. More »

Netflix has made clear its intention to bring Facebook integration to users in the United States (following similar moves elsewhere), and now — after clearing some legislative hurdles — it’s finally rolling out the feature. That will let users link their Facebook account to their Netflix account and automatically share what they watch with others, although sharing will be limited to Netflix by default — Facebook sharing needs to be enabled in the “Social Settings” on the Netflix website. Naturally, once enabled, that sharing is also enabled across your various Netflix-ready devices, letting you see what individual friends have been watching (and letting them see what you’ve been watching, although you can choose to not share specific titles). Netflix also notes that its social features “will evolve with new capabilities being tested regularly,” and that upcoming tests include the ability to let members “explicitly share their favorite titles on Facebook and discuss with their friends.” You can find a short video from Netflix explaining the feature after the break.

Filed under: HD, Facebook

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Via: Bloomberg

Source: Netflix, Official Netflix Blog

Last week it was announced that Facebook would be announcing an update (or improvement) of its News Feed design, but have you ever wondered how Facebook came up with the idea? Well according to a post by Facebook (source link below), it seems that the social networking giant has gone a bit old school in coming up with its design, and it was by utilizing Post-It notes on a wall, categorizing posts into updates from friends, funny posts, photos and etc. Looking at an excerpt from the blog post:

We came up with the idea of multiple feeds, each with its own focus on a particular topic, type of content, or type of friend. It was a good start, but crucial questions remained: which feeds to offer, and which stories to put into them?

I gave each participant a stack of recent stories from their feed, printed out on paper, and asked them to pick out the ones that interested them and discard the rest. Next, I asked them to sort the remaining, interesting stories by putting them into piles separated by what they liked about each. An analysis of participants’ piles and the stories they’d put into them yielded clear themes.

In any case if you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes and how ideas are developed, you should check out the post in the source link below. As it stands Facebook’s new News Feed will be rolled out slowly and overtime, so don’t worry if you haven’t received the updated look yet. However if you’re too impatient, you can sign yourself up on their waiting list over here.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Reader To Be Discontinued On July 1, Twitter Troll Messes With Pro Boxer, Nearly Gets His Just Deserts,

We’ve seen the new Facebook News Feed quite a few times lately, with all its redesigned goodness. While the features, changes, and other particulars have been detailed over the past weeks, Facebook has given us an alternative look into what went into the redesign – namely, a huge floor-to-ceiling paper storyboard and a stack of cards.

The stack of cards wasn’t the only element, of course, but it does provide an interesting visual for what was a fairly elaborate brainstorming process that went on behind the scenes. Facebook’s Jane Justice Leibrock posted a detailed write up about how the design process incorporated user feedback over at Facebook’s User Experience Lab.

According to the piece, the most common feedback Facebook users supplied was, “My feed is cluttered.” Thus the process began of determining what precisely this meant, something that is said to have involved methods from both anthropology and psychology. The meaning of “clutter,” as supplied by users, was deconstructed using the open-ended interview method, which revealed that the complaint of clutter involved posts more than design.

A look at the rote data, however, showed that this was also the content – page posts, songs listened to, games played, etc. – that users interacted with the most. This, then, necessitated a task to offer this content while separating it from the News Feed. This involved the “card sort” method, which was used to determine the splitting up and displaying of various feeds. The participants in the research were given a stack of cards that displayed recent content from their Facebook News Feed. These participants were tasked with sorting the cards, picking out the ones featuring content they were interested in.

These stories were then sorted into different categories based on why the participants liked them: funny, friend update, etc. While part of the results of this included obvious things, such as that Facebook users prefer content from close friends, a couple unexpected discoveries were also made: that people prefer content relevant to their interests, as well as a category for Facebook friends who aren’t close real life friends, but whose statuses they enjoyed seeing.

This information led to the redesign that Facebook users will see in the near future, which will hopefully prove more intuitive and less that what you see on the social network right now. You can get a run down of what to expect from our guide here.

[via Facebook]

Facebook reveals how the updated News Feed was developed is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
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