New Facebook features make stalking easier

Stalk team, assemble.

Facebook is currently experimenting with a redesign that will add some… Stalk team, assemble.

Facebook is currently experimenting with a redesign that will add some radical changes to profile pages as we know them. Via a Facebook Pages account, the company is taking user feedback on screenshots of the redesigned profiles expected to launch this spring, according to the group.

The screenshots depict a tabular profile, with the first tab showing the improved “wall” feature, as well as a tab for “about” and “photos,” for example. Other deserving applications can have a tab if you so choose, the screenshot caption said.

To further our need for social-circle hierarchy, screenshots depict the potential addition of a “best friends” application to the “about me” page, an obvious rip of MySpace’s “top friends” feature.

We all know we need more time to play God with the social standing of our friends. Now Facebook can make it easier and sanctioned!

This biggest change is the merger of the “mini-feed” and the wall into the “new wall.”

Just what we needed: even more comprehensive stalking capability.

The layout encourages posting to someone’s wall after seeing an item in his or her mini-feed.

Given your friendship with both people posting, the wall will also show “wall-to-wall” interaction without having to click to a new page, a screenshot caption said.

The purpose, Facebook said, is storytelling.

“You’ll now see a progression of posts that should tell a more complete story,” an update to fans of the pages account said. “All of this information is in the same place, so it makes it easier to find and read.

“The goal is to make a cleaner, more relevant wall that compiles the most relevant information about the people you care about.”

It’s all a matter of voyeurism, completely trivial knowledge we obsess over on a daily basis.

We like to know about us.

Way to go, self-indulgent pricks!

I’m amused when people say they cruise celebrity gossip blogs and similar entertainment sites well before they visit actual news sites. Interestingly enough, statistics back that.

Much like our television sets, there’s a division between what men and women are clicking, unless it’s Facebook. The site topped the top 10 websites among 18- to 24-year-olds, according to a Youth Trends survey published by eMarketer earlier this month. The numbers vary within that No. 1 slot, as 60 percent of men cited Facebook as their favorite site, 14 percent fewer than women.

Here’s a look at the top 10 for men and women, as reported by the survey:

Women: 2. YouTube, 3. Google, 4. Perez Hilton (“OMG!”), 5. CNN, 6. MySpace, 7. Yahoo!, 8. School’s site, 9. AOL and 10. PostSecret.

Men: 2. ESPN, 3. YouTube, 4. Google, 5. CollegeHumor (“Dude, check this out …”), 6. Yahoo!, 7. Weather.com, 8. Break, 9. Digg and 10. Wikipedia.

Wikipedia? Way to reaffirm our intelligence there, men. Notice the Perez Hilton and PostSecret adds in the women’s column, granting me the ability to further perpetuate the stereotype that all women are gossipy.

Oh, hush. It was a joke.

Men are obviously more obsessed with the world of athletics, but the research also shows that awkwardly shot video of people throwing up or getting hit in the groin holds an important place in the male Web-surfing lifestyle.

There’s nothing new here demographically. These are all pretty familiar stereotypes of our gender roles. With that understanding, though, it’s easier to see why Facebook is changing.

Notice on the whole – news about world events is pretty low. News/gossip about people (including the ability to backstab and stalk) is up high.

In journalism there’s a label for stories revolving around what someone is doing. You’ll typically see these in feature sections or as profiles of athletes, either way they’re called “human interest.”

It’s a double meaning when you think about it. The story is about a human’s interest, which easily becomes in the interest of other humans.

People have been aggregating this content for years in newspapers, yearbooks and magazines (see: Cosmo’s Va-jay-jays), now technology is allowing us to do it for ourselves.

Actually, now technology is doing it for us whether we want it to or not.

And as long as it keeps us on the site longer, it’s irrelevant to Facebook what information it’s digging up.