Facebook: Evolving into much more than networking

Facebook is changing again in the hopes of keeping their position as the top social networking site.

On March 11 a series of new Facebook changes started taking effect. Facebook released a new Facebook Pages, messages, and even movie rentals through Warner Bros.
One of the most interesting changes is the new ability to rent/purchase movies through Warner Bros. on Facebook.
It’s as simple as “liking” the movie. If you “like” the movie you can pay three dollars to watch the film through Facebook.
In a move that other distributors are sure to follow, Warner Bros. released Dark Knight as a rental through Facebook and promises more releases in the future.

In addition , there are changes being made to Facebook Pages, which are pages set up for non-personal use.
Most of the changes to Facebook Pages is geared towards businesses, organizations, and brands who want to interact with their fans.
Now, Facebook Pages  users can use Facebook as a business with the ability to “like” other pages, comment on pages, see news feed as recent/top news, choose which news to view, and see notification updates in the same way personal pages are able to interact.

The major downside of Facebook choosing “top news” is that it automatically sorts out what it considers to be “top news”. In other words, you better check twice to make sure Facebook hasn’t skipped over any wind-of-the-mill news that you might be interested in.

The biggest bonus of using the Facebook Page is that you can post something on your Facebook business page as yourself instead of becoming the voice of your business.

You can stay updated with changes made to the Facebook Pages by visiting www.facebook.com/FacebookPages.

The evolution of Messages is something every Facebook user will be interested in.

The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog about how the new Messages will work.

Messages now allows you to decide how you’d like to talk with your friends—SMS, chat, e-mail or Messages—and they will receive your message through whatever medium/device is most convenient for them.

“You can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn’t have to remember who prefers IM over e-mail or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message,” said Zuckerberg.

One of the more interesting changes is the creation of @facebook.com e-mail addresses for any Facebook user who wants one.

People no longer need to be on Facebook to talk with friends—whether these friends are Facebook users or not.

Zuckerberg insists that Messages is not e-mail.

“There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation,” said Zuckerberg.

Time will tell how this affects other big messaging companies.

This is a small step towards becoming a media giant—competing against virtually every aspect of social networking and social media.