A Facebook Glossary

News Feed: The News Feed is the first thing a user sees upon logging in to Facebook. It’s an automatically-generated list of all the activity of the user’s Facebook friends. For example, "Michelle added new interests to her profile,” or "Chelsea uploaded new photos.” The newsfeed is the main catalyst for all Facebook interaction.

Stream: The Stream is the new real-time version of the News Feed, which (as far as I can tell as of this writing) will be automatically refreshed to show the latest stories. The Stream will include not just a user's Friends' activities, but also the user's Fan Pages.

Story: Stories are the items that appear in the Stream or News Feed -- each individual item in the list is called a Story.

Comment: Comment is one of the options for users to give feedback about a Story in the Stream. Clicking "Comment" opens up a text box underneath the Story -- the user can add a note and the note will then appear on context with the Story on the Stream.

Like: The other option for giving feedback on a Story is to click the "Like" button -- if you don't have any actual commentary to add but you want to acknowledge the Story in some way, you can just choose to say that you "Like" it.

Friend Lists: Since the Stream will now be updated in real time and will display stories from all of a users Friends and Pages, users can use Friend Lists to filter the Stream and choose to only see stories from certain groups of people. (I'll post more info about Friend Lists when the home page changes go live.)

Profile: Facebook profiles are the pages that display a user's personal information, as well as all their interactions with friends.

Profile Tabs: Profile information is divided into sections of different content.

• The Info tab displays basic information like Birthday and Hometown, as well as interests and activities. The Info tab also lists all Groups the user is a member of, and all the Pages the user is a Fan of.
• The Wall tab dispays all the user's interactions with friends (comments and messages) as well as status messages.
• The Photos tab is pretty self-explanatory.
• The Boxes tab is not at all self-explanatory! It's where all other Application information lives. (For example, mine shows the "Growing Gifts" I've received from friends, and the i'll go! events I'm attending.)
• Other tabs: users can choose to turn their Application boxes into separate tabs. I display my "Extended Info" application as a separate tab because I want to make it easy for people to find.

Pages: Facebook Pages (possibly called "public profiles" now) are for any entity that's not an individual. They were created as a way for users to connect with brands and organizations. (For much more on Pages, read my February E-marketing E-ssentials article.) Pages now have the same layout as user profiles.

Status messages / Publisher interface: There's a text field at the top of the home page and the Profile page that asks, "What's on your mind?" (formerly "What are you doing right now?"). If you type text in the box and click "Share" (or "Post), the text will become your new status message (e.g., "Michelle is writing blog posts about Facebook.").

That same field can now be used to share links, photos, etc: if you add a link or photo by clicking the links directly below the field, the text in the field will instead be attached as a comment from you on the link or photo (instead of updating your Status).


Mini-feed: The mini-feed was the section on a Facebook Page that displayed the recent activity of the Page (e.g. "Carnegie Hall posted a new note;" "Playwrights Horizons added a new event"). On the new layout of Pages, the Stream serves the same function.

Updates: Until now, the only direct way for a Page to communicate with its Fans was to send out an Update. With this week's changes, that's no longer the case, but Updates may still provide to be an important communication channel. More on Updates to come in a later post.