Facebook’s press invite for an event on April 4, which we think has to do with an HTC Facebook phone, is bound to overshadow all other things Facebook, but that doesn’t mean all the other Facebook news from this week isn’t important. So here are all this week’s Facebook stories, rounded up to keep you in the loop.
Anchored navigation bar with status updates
Here’s a new feature we’ve noticed for those of you with the new Timeline. If you scroll down the page, the Status, Photo, Place, and Life Event tabs will suddenly follow you. That’s because these tabs are anchored to a navigation bar that includes buttons with your name, “Timeline,” and “Now” on the left of the bar. To encourage users to share content on Facebook even if we’re scrolled all the way down the page, the anchored navigation bar will give you a quick way to post a status update or photo. You can also attach multiple photos in one fell swoop.
Nested comments roll out to Pages
We’ve seen nested comments and the ability to reply before, but that was only made available inside of Facebook’s commenting widget used in blogs. But starting with Facebook Pages that have more than 10,000 followers, the social network is turning on the ability to reply to comments come July 10 of this year. In addition, the most “active and engaging conversations” within posts on these pages will bubble up to the top of the post “ensuring that people who visit your Page will see the best conversations,” Facebook’s Journalism Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik writes.
The feature was in the testing phase since November, and while it has rolled out to these eligible pages and some user pages as well, it’s only available on the desktop app. You’ll have to wait before threaded comments pop up in its mobile apps and added into Facebook’s Graph API.
Mark Zuckerberg is forming a political group in his free time?
What does the man that has everything do with his spare time? Jump into politics, apparently. Bloomberg reports that Facebook’s CEO is calling other dignitaries within the tech community to form a political group with him. Zuckerberg has shown an interest in politics before, holding a town hall meeting for Obama in 2011 and a political fundraiser for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (note he donated $100 million to Newark schools in 2010) – he also “Liked” presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Facebook Page, and Facebook’s PAC spent $267,000 on political donations in 2012 (between January and September).
Facebook retiring “Facebook Credits” in favor of local currencies
How much is a Facebook Credit worth? Not many people would be able to answer that. If you’re curious, a single Credit is valued at $0.10. Developers were forced to charge in-app purchases based on Facebook’s $0.10 increments, says Facebook Engineer Yongyan Liu, so Facebook is meeting its developers’ needs and rolling out local currency payments. What this means is that developers can now charge as much as they want (reasonably we hope) for in-app purchases in the gamer’s preferred currency, whether that’s in USD, Euros, or Yen. The local currency payment structure will take effect starting sometime in Q3 2013.
