Facebook Restores the New Publisher's Ability to Auto-Format Links

Facebook has made more changes to its new content publisher, including restoring the ability of users to paste a link into the status publisher and have it automatically format a rich media post. While this functionality was available in the old publisher, it was stripped from the new version, forcing users to choose the type of content they wanted to publish ahead of time. This restoration will make it easy for users to add a link to a status update they're composing. Facebook has also removed the ability to delete a link while in the process of composing a link-based story in the publisher. Users instead can switch story types using the publisher’s tabs, but in doing so they’ll lose any description of the link which they’ve written. Facebook’s publisher helps users share some of the 30 billion pieces of content distributed per month on the site. While it can post simple text status updates, or upload photos and videos, the publisher’s ability to reformat any URL into a compelling snapshot of that website is its biggest strength. You can post a news article link and the publisher auto-populates with the article’s headline, lede, and an image. Insert a YouTube URL and you get a streaming video player with a thumbnail of the video and its description, or paste a URL ending in “.mp3” for a streaming audio player complete with artist and album name. By creating a compelling post without requiring the user to type anything, Facebook has made sharing a fluid and natural part of browsing the internet. For the last few weeks, though, users had to know whether type of content they wanted to publish before they started composing. If a user began writing a status update about an upcoming concert, then decided they wanted to include a link to one of the artist’s songs, they’d lose their original text. By restoring auto-formatting of URLs placed in the status publisher, Facebook takes the burden of choice off of the user. However, users can no longer reverse this process to turn a link story into a text-only status update. Previously, while composing a link story, users could click an “x” button to remove the link, turning the optional user-entered description into a status update. This button has been removed, forcing users to click the status publisher tab or reload the page in order to clear the link. Switching to the status tab caused the publisher to drop the link story in progress -- description and all. While users can switch back to the link tab to regain their progress, they must copy and paste to use their link description as a status update. Users can still post a hyperlink in a simple status update, though not by clicking the "x" button like before. Since a hyperlinked status update is smaller and can be shown on mobile devices, some reports say it can get better news feed placement and more clicks than a full-sized rich link story. Those concerned with their news feed optimization can achieve this trick by pasting a URL into the status composer, letting it auto-format into a link, then clicking back to the status tab. This will show the URL unlinked in the composer, but it will become an active hyperlink once published. While these changes may seem minute, at Facebook’s scale the loss of just one second on each share costs millions of hours in productivity a month. As long as Facebook’s mission is to “Give people the power to share”, it will continue to iterate on the publisher. Thanks to Brandglue for the tip.

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Facebook Restores the New Publisher's Ability to Auto-Format Links

Josh Constine

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Josh Constine