Facebook Begins Testing Different Status Categories
Facebook has begun testing a new status composer that lets users select from a number of categories to express how they are feeling, what they are eating, or what they are reading.
The categories also let the user choose a specific emotion, other piece of media, or add custom text descriptions in order to share with their friends what exactly is happening in their lives at that time.
These category statuses are currently being tested with some users on the desktop and mobile version of the site. It is hoped that people will share on the site at a more frequent rate rather than just adding plain text updates.
Users can select to share from a list of categories such as feeling, watching, eating, drinking, reading, or listening to. Options such as happy, Breaking Bad, cake, tea, Harry Potter, or Jay-Z can be picked to represent your current action.
This update follows a move from Facebook which has seen status prompts saying things such as ‘How are you doing, Dan?’ and ‘How are you feeling, Dan?’
A spokesperson for Facebook told Techcrunch that: “It’s just a new way for people to visually represent what they’re doing and how they’re feeling through their Facebook posts. It will only be available to small set of people. This isn’t integrated into Graph Search. It’s just a small test to see if people are interested in sharing their actions in a more visual way.”
When choosing your status out of a list of categories rather than simply writing it out, Facebook manages to gather structured data for themselves. This will lead to helping them connect with advertisers and users by matching specific ads to users who have posted content similar to the ad.
Facebook will be able to target users with ads when they have used a pre-formatted emotion or piece of media in their Facebook status. For example, Coffee shops will be targeted at those who indicated they have been drinking coffee, or a band would have more of their products aimed at users if they’d indicated they were listening to one of their songs.
Furthermore, advertisers could potentially pay Facebook in order to become a primary option or suggestion when a user enters into a category selector. These would be ‘Sponsored Activities’.
This testing will extend the ‘action spec ad targeting’ that Facebook uses. This targeting allows the site to match advertisers to you based on your activity on the site. These often happen in Open Graph connected apps such as Spotify.
Should this be distributed to users in the future, it could prove to be a brilliant way for the social network to help users further express themselves as well as the site building their own chances to increase advertisement placement.
What do you think about these tests? Do you think it would be popular amongst users?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter.
Daniel Barr
Follow us @SocialMediaF & @DanielAtSMF
www.socialmediafrontiers.com
Facebook Begins Testing Different Status Categories
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Friday, February 01, 2013
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