Facebook Abolishes Statuses.

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Facebook Abolishes Statuses.

no more pithy one-liners

httpwebwitch

1:01 am on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

I just noticed this moments ago

Facebook will let you "clear" your status.
Once you do, you can't get it back.

I cleared my status, thinking at the time, "I wonder what this link does?"
Now I am statusless.

It's been replaced with "What's On Your Mind?", which let's face it is not the same as "status", it's just a vanilla wall post on the endless wall that was once your friend feed.

Is the facebook "status" a thing of the past? Are they bowing out of that game, leaving the conch firmly in the hands of its evil twin, Twitter?

Or does the status live on and I'm merely the victim of some horrible GUI interface design where the status update is buried in some box on a canvas page ten clicks from nowhere?

Status, status, wherefore art thou, status?
They just added you to the API, like, YESTERDAY, and already you're extinct?

RIP

GaryK

2:24 am on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

I found an article in the Chicago Tribune that confirms what you're reporting.

Where Facebook users used to be asked what they were doing, prompted with their name followed by a space to finish the sentence, now there's a question: "What's on your mind?"
And the "stream" below is a collection of what others in your network have on their minds. Kind of like Twitter.

ADDED: Google facebook status for the article. It's currently the first result. :)

[edited by: GaryK at 2:26 am (utc) on Mar. 19, 2009]

maximillianos

12:43 pm on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

I think the status thing got kind of old... Most folks were out of date a few hours after they posted a "status". I know mine always was. So from that perspective I like the new feature better... It is a snap shot of what you are doing/thinking at that moment... and it lives on in other folks feeds... I think it works much better and just makes more sense...

Kings on steeds

1:01 pm on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

they dont seem to have updated the chat though, you can still see peoples last comment as their "status" and you even get the old box with your first name in ready for a status from you, although that then does go into the stream aswell... but is preaty much the same, wonder if this will get updated or remain 'old skool'?

nealrodriguez

2:33 pm on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

twitter ninja-ed the status functionality in its entirety; they're focus on a single facet of online communication is propelling them to social prepotency.

Seb7

4:08 pm on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

There has been some talk for a while about Facebook becoming more like Twitter.

JS_Harris

5:13 pm on Mar 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

I think asking what you were doing was a limited question, asking what you are thinking about covers a lot more territory. "is about to do the dishes" just isn't as exciting as "I'm thinking about renting Tarzan with Bo Derek in it, should I?".

As for being like Twitter, it's clear that instant audience is the goal for 2010.

Seb7

3:41 pm on Mar 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

ok, after a few days of using this latest version of Facebook, I think they have made a few mistakes. Changes the status, well its ok.

But this new layout for the home page is just not doing it for me at all. It used look quite interesting, almost news like with bold large photos within your home page making an interest browse, now it just looks like a database entry list of too much the same, cant be bothered to read past the first few entries.

I'm sure these new changes will be reflected badly in their user stats.

aspdaddy

12:21 pm on Mar 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

I guess they have to keep changing it to grow and making it more like twitter is one way to quickly grow

GaryK

3:38 pm on Mar 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

Has Facebook ever had a serious worldwide outage like Twitter did last night (US East Coast Time)?