Stream Changes Actually Going Live Today
Two weeks ago I prematurely announced that the Facebook stream changes were going live for users and developers. While the original roadmap had an earlier date, the changes are finally going live tonight. What does that mean for developers? Not much, since most developers have most likely made the necessary adjustments to their stream stories. For users however, it will mean a different layout for stream stories (as pictured below).
Personally, unless I go to the Facebook live stream, I never see application stories anymore. There could be a number of reasons for the decreased visibility though. As I wrote two weeks ago:
It’s a subtle interface change but many developers know that this could have a significant impact on feed dependent applications. In addition to smaller images, developers will also need to keep all action links in feed stories to less than 25 characters. [Developers will also have only the first 300 characters of story text displayed.] It’s a change which makes the stream look much cleaner however it will also definitely impact some applications.
Developers should only interact with stream methods for publishing stories. That includes the option of using Stream Attachments which are essentially JSON-encoded key-value pairs. Enough technical speak though! If you are a developer and want to know more about today’s changes you can view Facebook’s blog post from last month.
Look for the changes to go live this evening.
