Member Article

Facebook tests new functionality

Facebook are in the process of testing new Functionality which will make it easier for users to interact with one another. This will hopefully lead towards better engagement and customer service with users.

Reply Option

Have you ever wanted to respond directly to a comment a user has made on your status, but not been able to? Well, Facebook are in the process of testing a reply option for comments posted to Timeline. Meredith Chin of Facebook told Mashable, “We are testing a new way to add comments to a post on Facebook, now you will be able to reply to another comment as well as the original post.”

Personally, I am very excited for this as it will make it a lot easier for users to respond to individual comments directly. I hope this will lead to better engagement with users and help develop relationships for brands.

Ranked Comments

Not wanting to stop there, the social giant is all in the process of beta testing ranked comments for pages. This will mean the post with the most engagement will float to the top of the page. A great aspect of this feature is the ability for page administrators to reply directly to these posts via a reply option.

Ranked comments are based on likes, responses and hides. Facebook released this statement to Mashable regarding ranked comments: “We are testing a new format for comments on page posts. As part of this test, the most engaging comments appear higher up. You will also be able to reply to individual comments, as well as the original post.”

I am a little worried this may cause some confusion and comments may get missed if they are not as engaging at other posts.

Sound Notification

Facebook are also in the process of testing an alert to notify users of notifications, a ping sound when you receive a message, timeline comment, event invitation or picture comment. Only a small percentage of people are testing this function which can be controlled from the Account Settings page.

http://youtu.be/Oy1jW9M3ZRk

Sounding a little bit like the MSN notifications, I am unsure whether this will really take off, or if people will actually get annoyed with it.

Instead of looking at functionality around their paid advertising, it is a refreshing change to see improvements to their organic functionality. I am hoping this will see an increase in engagement with users and wonder when these will be pushed live!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katrina Brownless .