The Facebook Blog

Displaying the last 10 posts.

by Joe Hewitt Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 9:44am

Last August we launched our Facebook iPhone website, and almost a year later it has over 1.5 million people using it regularly. We are thrilled to see so many enjoying Facebook on their iPhones, so we've been working on ways to take our iPhone experience to the next level. Today, Apple has opened the doors to its App Store which features a new application we've created: Facebook for iPhone.

You're probably wondering what makes our iPhone application different from our iPhone website. The bottom line is that applications built for the iPhone have access to more technology than websites. For example, with the native application you can take photos with the iPhone's camera and upload them instantly to your Mobile Uploads album on Facebook. You'll also find the native application is much faster than the website, giving you more reliable access to your Friends, Photos, and Inbox.

Facebook for iPhone also brings one important new feature to the iPhone - Facebook Chat. Wherever you are, you'll be able to see which of your Facebook friends are online and chat with them for free.

The first version of Facebook for iPhone is just a glimpse of the future. For instance, the iPhone has the ability to find where you are located, and we are looking for ways to let you opt-in to share your location and discover nearby friends. We're developing this and several other exciting new features that we'll release in the coming months.

Facebook for iPhone works with the original iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPhone 3G. You can download the application for free from Apple's App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/

Joe, a Facebook engineer, built Facebook for iPhone.

Updated about a week ago

He/She/They: Grammar and Facebook.

by Naomi Gleit Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 10:37pm

As Facebook grows in other languages, we are learning a lot about what the "Facebook Experience" is like for people around the world. One of the first challenges was getting words that are really long in other languages to fit on the screen properly. Recently, we've been figuring out how to deal with a new challengeâ€”grammar.

Ever see a story about a friend who tagged "themself" in a photo? "Themself" isn't even a real word. We've used that in place of "himself or herself". We made that grammatical choice in order to respect people who haven't, until now, selected their sex on their profile.

However, we've gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles. People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely in Mini-Feed stories.

For this reason, we've decided to request that all Facebook users fill out this information on their profile. If you haven't yet selected a sex, you will probably see a prompt to choose whether you want to be referred to as "him" or "her" in the coming weeks. When you make a selection, that will appear in Mini-Feed and News Feed stories about you, but it won't be searchable or displayed in your Basic Information.

We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting. We have a lot of respect for these communities, which is why it will still be possible to remove gender entirely from your account, including how we refer to you in Mini-Feed.

We hope this change will make the Facebook experience even better across the world. Let us know if you have any thoughts about this on our suggestions page.

Naomi is a Product Manager at Facebook.

We're Open For Commentary

by Tom Whitnah Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 10:47am

At Facebook, we're always trying to find new ways to make communication easier and more efficient. One way we do that is by making it easy to have a conversation about the things that happen on Facebook. In the past, you've been able to comment on photos, notes and posted items, but if there was something else on your friend's profileâ€”an interesting status, or a cool new friendshipâ€”you'd need to send a message or write a Wall post to talk about it. But starting today, you can comment on your friends' Mini-Feed stories right from their profile.

Now you can easily converse around friends' statuses, application stories, new friendships, videos, and most other stories you see on their profile. Just click on the comment bubble icon to write a comment or see comments other people have written.

Tom is a software engineer and is looking forward to your comments on this feature.

Updated about 3 weeks ago

Facebook in Translation

by Chad Little Monday, June 23, 2008 at 12:18pm

Five months ago, we launched the first translated version of Facebook in Spanish. Since then, the internationalization team and its community translators have been busy translating the site into sixteen more languages. We now supportâ€”among othersâ€”French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian. You can see the full list of languages, or change your language settings, from the language selector in the footer on any page.

Our goal is to support Facebook in the native language of all our users and people who want to use the site. In this regard, we've received requests from thousands of people who want to help translate Facebook into languages beyond the sixteen released languages and the eight that are in the process of being translated.

Based on this feedback, we opened 55 new languages this week for translation by the community. Now native speakers can use our Translations application to translate Facebook into additional Asian languages (Malaysian, Vietnamese), African dialects (Zulu, Xhosa), regional varieties (British English, Canadian French) and even rarely spoken languages, such as Latin and Esperanto.

The most important factor in all of this has been the hardworking communities that spend their time getting Facebook ready to be used in every language across the world. Without them, this process would be much more difficult. We're working hard to continue to open even more languages for translation, so stay tuned.

Chad is a Facebook designer and is looking forward to translating Facebook into leet speak.

Inbox Search

by Prashant Malik Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 5:16pm

This month, we're rolling out Inbox search, a tool which allows you to search through all of your messages either by name of the person who sent it, or by a keyword that shows up in the text. Ever had a friend send you a Facebook message suggesting a good restaurant? Or maybe you were sent an address or phone number of an old friend. Then time passes and your Inbox fills up, and by the time you're ready to go out to eat with your old friend you have to page through hundreds of Facebook messages to find the one you need. Inbox Search aims to fix this problem.

Inbox search was something we knew we needed for a long time. It's been requested a lot by users, so we wanted to take the time to make sure we built the right solution that would scale to support everyone using the site. Millions of messages are sent everyday on Facebook; we built an in-house system to handle indexing all of this information for Inbox search. Once we developed this system, we began testing it for some users to make sure it was stable and ready to go. Starting this week, Inbox search is available to a few networks, but soon everyone will see a search box at the top of their Inbox enabling them to search through all past messages.

Prashant is a Facebook engineer.

Updated about a month ago

Welcome to Facebook, homeschoolers

by Christina Holsberry Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 11:09pm

Back in September 2006, we decided to open up Facebook to everyone. Well, almost everyone.

We realized Facebook would be most useful if more people were allowed to join, but we also weren't willing to compromise the security of the site by removing all methods of verification, especially for high school students and minors. Unfortunately this meant that most homeschoolers weren't able to register. For security purposes, users under the age of 18 were required to affiliate with their current high school, but it was nearly impossible to extend this system to homeschooled users.

A few of the groups related to this issue.

We've been working on ways to solve thisâ€”we want minors to use Facebook safely above all. Today, we're happy to announce that we've recently come up with a way for homeschoolers to join. We've created a new verification systemâ€”one that doesn't depend on being in a high school, but still provides the level of security we believe is required. So welcome, everyone, to Facebook.

Christina, a homeschool alum, is happy to welcome all her classmates to Facebook.

Friend Suggestor

by Will Chen Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 10:07am

One thing we spend a lot of time thinking about here is how someone who just joined Facebook figures out what to do next. Almost everything on Facebook centers around friendsâ€”sending messages, checking out photos and profilesâ€”all of these things are pretty boring without any friends.

We realized that people who are already on Facebook know who should be friends with whom in ways that we could never figure out. So, for example, if John joined Facebook and became friends with Sally, Sally would probably already know a few people who would want to be friends with John. We built the "Friend Suggestor" so that Sally could do just that.

Look for the link to "Suggest Friends" at the bottom of your friends' profiles. We built this as a way for people to find others they didn't know were on Facebook, not as an introduction tool. Use it to help your friends find each other, especially so that your friends who are new to Facebook don't feel lonely for very long.

Will, a Facebook engineer, is suggesting friends for his parents.

Blocked Content and Facebook Security

by Ryan McGeehan Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 4:18pm

We've often written about our commitment to keeping Facebook a safe place for you to interact and share information with your friends. We work hard to keep the site free of abuse, spam, and harassment. A recent place where we've been fighting the spam battle has been through sites that ask for a user's login information to use a contact importer, and then spam all of their friends. Our response seems to have confused some people as to why certain content can't be sent through our systems. For example, if you try to send a message that contains a link to a website with an importer, you might get a message like this:

This response is our way of trying to protect everyone's privacy. Right now, the sites that are asking for this information, and that we are blocking as a result, gain complete access and control over your account when you enter your login infoâ€”your photos, your private messages, and your friends. In order to protect sensitive data, we make it hard for spam to spread through Facebook.

We know that there are legitimate places where it would be useful to have your Facebook Friend List with you, which is why we've been working so hard on Facebook Connect. Our goal there is to allow you to bring any information you want over to any service you want, while still maintaining all of our privacy standards across the web. That way, you will have control over your informationâ€”not anyone else.

Ryan works on the site security team and continues to be a dodge ball ninja.

Update Your Profile From More Websites

by Peter X. Deng Friday, May 23, 2008 at 11:44am

A few weeks ago, we told you about the new ability to import stories into your Mini-Feed from other sites. Since then, we've been working on increasing the number of sites that work with this feature. We're happy to report that now, you can import activity from YouTube, StumbleUpon, Hulu, Pandora, Last.fm, and Google Reader in addition to Flickr, Picasa, Digg, Yelp and del.icio.us.

Look for the "Import" link in the corner of your Mini-Feed to connect your Facebook profile to your accounts on any of these websites. Your profile will automatically update when you upload a video to YouTube, rate last night's episode of The Office on Hulu, and so on. If you have a personal blog, you can enter the URL in and a Mini-Feed story will be published every time you write a new post. As your friends start importing activity, keep an eye on your News Feed, it will only become more interesting as Facebook opens up to more sites.

Peter, a Product Manager, created Lupe Fiasco Radio on Pandora and rated Goodbye, Toby (The Office) on Hulu.

Updated about 2 months ago

Profile Changes Are Coming Soon

by Mark Slee Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 7:15pm

Earlier today we had a small press event where we walked a few reporters and bloggers through the upcoming changes to the profile. We got to reiterate our intention of making the profile cleaner and simpler, and more relevant, while still giving you control over your profile. It was a great opportunity to answer questions and clear up any confusions about the upcoming changes.

Journalists aren't the only ones who get a sneak peek. You can see all of the same information on the Facebook Profiles Preview Page. Learn more about tabs, the new publisher, resizing of news feed stories, and more. We recommend starting with our "Overview" album, or, if you're itching to find out what happened at the Open Door Event, check out the video of it.

Mark Slee is the Product Manager for the Profile changes.