According to TechCrunch, Facebook is testing out default emotive status updates that might encourage users to throw in additional context to what they’re doing.
More and more, Facebook is getting into the business of emotions. When Facebook introduced Timeline, it was compelling users to share bits and pieces about their lives and to be the de facto platform for cataloging life’s milestones. The social network has also introduced emojis into its messaging platform. Still, it appears that Facebook wants us to share more about ourselves, and to do so the platform is experimenting with structured status updates that asking how we’re feeling.
If this update rolls out to everyone, users can add details like how we’re feeling, what we’re watching, what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, and other minor details that may seem small but actually are of critical importance to Facebook.
These emotive status updates are like mini life events, and by encouraging you to add more details about your life, Facebook is able to better gauge your immediate interests that can’t be figured out by simple “Likes.” In fact, Mark Zuckerberg during the Q4 earnings call, mentioned in passing a key detail about Facebook’s strategy moving forward. Facebook in 2013 is making an effort with scraping the content that you’re publishing on its platform. For instance, based on an example Zuckerberg provided, he said that if you haven’t identified your location, but shared it in an update, Facebook will be able to figure out where you are. This same strategy applies to this personalized status update that Facebook is experimenting with. If you’re sharing immediate interests via emotive status updates, Facebook would be able to better target its ads accordingly.
In response to discovering the test, Facebook had this to say:
“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.”
What are your thoughts on this type of status update?
