CBS News
It says something about Facebook’s place in American society that its 26-year-old CEO took to “60 Minutes” on Sunday to unveil a feature update to the social network.
Mark Zuckerberg appeared with Lesley Stahl to talk about some major changes to the site centered around redesigned personal profile pages.
Social media consultant Charlene Li, a member of Poynter’s national advisory board, wrote about the updates in advance of Zuckerberg’s announcement, and reports that the redesign supports Facebook’s business strategy.
Advertisers depend on the profile information shared on Facebook to target marketing messages, but users do not update their profile pages very frequently. She writes:
“So Facebook has an incentive to encourage people to not only update their profile pages, but to also make it much more reflective of their interests and relationships, making it a real reflection of the people and things that are important to them. And in so doing, people are providing valuable meta data to Facebook and its advertisers.”
The new look highlights profile information such as hometown, workplace, birth date and relationships. Possibly of more interest to users is the new “See Friendship” feature, which aggregates the messages, groups and photos you have in common with any one of your friends.
“You can see all of the things that you have in common with that person.” Zuckerberg told Stahl. “It gives you an amazing connection.”
