Facebook Acquires Storytelling Site Storylane in Talent Grab

Facebook has acquired Storylane, a relatively young social network focused around telling stories, for an undisclosed sum.

Storylane announced the acquisition in a blog post Friday, noting that the service will wind down and the team will join Facebook. "After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook," Storylane's founder and CEO Jonathan Gheller wrote in the post.

Facebook confirmed the acquisition in a statement provided to Mashable: "The team from Storylane will be an incredible addition to Facebook. Their previous work showcasing real identity through sincere and meaningful content will make them a perfect fit at Facebook."

We've heard from a source that the five-person staff at Storylane will join Facebook's Timeline team, reporting to Sam Lessin, who heads up the "Identity" product group at the company.

Storylane launched in October with the goal of prompting users to share meaningful stories from their lives. The service is perhaps most similar to Medium, the publishing platform launched last year by two of Twitter's co-founders. Gheller was ambitious in his goals for the service, telling Mashable at the time that the service was trying to "build a library of human experiences by crafting a community where people can share things that really matter."

For those who did share stories on the service, Storylane plans to roll out tools to help migrate those posts to other sites. Gheller also says Facebook will not be getting any of the company's data or operations as part of the acquisition.

Here's the full announcement Gheller made to the Storylane community:

Two years ago the team behind Storylane began working to help people connect in more fruitful and meaningful ways. We took on a mission – trying to help people better communicate who they are and what they care about, improve the way we do business with each other, find love and make new friendships. And at the heart of this work has always been our drive to build a more genuine online identity.

After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook.

This is an exciting opportunity. Facebook’s mission of connecting the world has always been at the center of our work, and like our friends at Facebook, meaningful connections are what our team is most passionate about.

The beautiful stories you have decided to share with us are yours to keep and share in however way you want. We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later, but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we’re working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way.

We want to give special thanks to our investors who supported us and encouraged us to dream big. It has been an absolute honor to work alongside such an outstanding group of people. Our journey as a young company was made possible by their commitment and patience. Without their guidance we would not be in a position to further our mission through Facebook.

Most of all, I want to thank our users. Your passion, sincerity and willingness to share, has made Storylane the incredible experience that exists today. We have learned so much from you. Your ideas and creativity will stay with us and inspire us on the next stage of our journey.

Image courtesy of Storylane.

Facebook Unveils a Radically Redesigned News Feed

Facebook announced Thursday it is giving its venerable news feed a new look and feel.

The new news feed represents the first major overhaul of Facebook's core service since the launch of Facebook Timeline at the end of 2011.

"The news feed is one of the most important things we've built," Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press event. Likening news feed to "the most personalized newspaper," Zuckerberg added that "the stories around you deserve to be displayed with more than just text."

"How we're all sharing is changing and the news feed needs to evolve with those changes. This is the evolving face of news feed."

The new news feed features three major components:

• Bigger Images
• Multiple Feeds
• Mobile Consistency

A New Focus on Imagery

The new look is a radical departure from the Facebook of old. It's mobile-inspired and consistent across devices.

When it comes to the feed itself, the focus on stories is now much more visual. Greater emphasis is given to images — which are now much larger. Photos now make up nearly 50% of news feed stories and are now front and center.

If you see shades of Instagram — or Google+ — in the new feed, you aren't alone. We see them too. Facebook says it is following trends on where design is headed and it is clear that trend includes big photos and a clean, navigable design.

More Feeds, More Control

As for the "feeds" aspect of news feed, users now have access to more types of feeds and have more control over how those feeds are displayed.

Users can subscribe to different types of feeds, including feeds from all friends, close friends, music, photos, games and those who a user "follows."

And, for those of us who hate how Facebook sorts news feed content, a chronological view is now available.

It's not clear how these new feeds will affect promoted stories and content or the longer-lasting impact it may have on brands and pages.

Mobile Consistency

The new news feed design was inspired by mobile. It takes significant cues from the Facebook mobile apps for phones and tablets, adding a new side navigation bar and more white space.

Understanding that more users are accessing Facebook from mobile than ever, Facebook is focused on making the overall experience more consistent, regardless of platform.

The new feed will start rolling out today on web.

Let us know your thoughts on the changes in the comments.

What Facebook's New News Feed Means for Marketers

Facebook on Thursday unveiled its first major redesign of the News Feed since 2009, making the page more visually rich, and giving users new options to filter what they see by different feed categories like Music, Photos, Games and Close Friends. At first glance, the changes appear to be a win-win for users who want more control over their Facebook homepage, but the redesign may prove to be more of a mixed bag for marketers.

For brands, the biggest positive about the new changes is that there is suddenly more real estate for in-stream ads. Facebook has expanded the size of the News Feed itself and shrunk the right and left rails surrounding the Feed. "Having a larger canvas to work with will be a real benefit to marketers," said Debra Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. "[Marketers] have always wanted more real estate and Facebook has always been more reticent to give them more play. By expanding the News Feed, that by default gives advertisers more room to play with as well."

A Facebook rep confirmed to Mashable in an email that Sponsored Posts will appear in-stream in the new News Feed just as they do in the current version, only "richer/bigger."

Greater real estate isn't the only big perk for marketers. Facebook is emphasizing visual content like pictures and videos in the feed, which provides brands with the opportunity to get creative. Williamson expects that brands will be able to capitalize on this by increasing their use of imagery in Sponsored Posts and eventually, if not inevitably, turning to video ads. "We didn't hear Facebook talk about video ads in this presentation," Williamson says, "but certainly Mark Zuckerberg has alluded to the fact that there will be more video in the News Feed, so there's an opportunity for brands to display video."

Beyond that, Facebook's decision to streamline the News Feed design across desktop and mobile is also a boon to marketers. According to Dan Slagen, SVP of marketing at Nanigans, this move "reduces friction" for advertisers planning out campaigns for mobile and desktop by ensuring a similar experience on each. "You are able to take one message and put it in the mind of a consumer and you are really able to drive that message home," he says.

However, the situation gets murkier for brands and marketers when it comes to the manynew subfeeds that Facebook has introduced. Until now, content from brands and publishers appeared in a user's News Feed right along side posts from friends and family. With the additional feeds, users have a quick way to focus on only what their friends are sharing (through the All Friends category), or even more specifically, on what their closest friends on the social network are sharing. Any user who choose these options is effectively opting out of seeing content from publishers, businesses and influencers whose pages they follow, but who they are not in fact friends with.

"The friends-only feed could get a lot of the volume, which may be a concern," said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital. "It might affect our ad delivery in the short-term if everyone starts using it."

"The friends-only feed could get a lot of the volume, which may be a concern," said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital. "It might affect our ad delivery in the short-term if everyone starts using it." That said, Mansell argues it's a necessary risk for Facebook to take to ensure the quality of the "core platform experience." Marketers may still choose to advertise in those feeds, but Mansell says they'll need to think harder about how to do so: "If you're trying to focus on your friends, you have to be careful how brands interrupt in there."

On the other hand, the additional feeds finally provide brands and advertisers with a way to better target the appropriate audience on Facebook. Before, a Sponsored post from Sony might show up in a user's News Feed regardless of what the user was doing in that particular session. Now, a company like Sony might only choose to place a Sponsored Post on the Music or Games feed, where it's presumably more relevant to that audience. Likewise, if users check their Following feed, it essentially means they've opted in to see content from brands and publishers, which means promotional content placed in that feed might see greater engagement from users.

"With most changes like this, it is always going to affect some people positively and some negatively," said Mauricio Aguayo, senior social strategist with Rokkan. "The user is now much more in control about what they want to see and they will be much more prone to engage with it because they've in essence raised their hand and asked to see this publication. But for awareness purposes and pushing content out, it may be a little negative." Aguayo speculates that Facebook may eventually offer brands and publishers the option to surface their posts in other feeds besides Following for an additional cost.

Facebook, for its part, suggests in a blog post that the new Following feed will benefit brands and publishers: "Thanks to a new 'Following' feed on the right-hand side of the home page, people will be able to discover more content from the Pages they like and the people they follow."

For better or worse, Facebook has also effectively downplayed the presence of ads in the right rail in order to place more emphasis on ads that appear in-stream. Not only is that problematic for marketers who rely on the sidebar ads as a cheaper way to reach users on the social network, but Williamson says it also undermines what has historically "been a pretty big contributor to Facebook's ad revenue."

The assumption going forward, according to several of the marketing experts we spoke with, is that providing more real estate and more prominence to visual content will help Facebook command greater ad rates. While that's good for a public company still looking to show meaningful revenue growth to Wall Street, it also means advertising on the social network will likely become significantly pricier and more competitive in the future.

Image courtesy of Facebook 

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Four Ways Publishers Can Optimize for Facebook's New News Feed

Facebook unveiled its "new" News Feed Thursday, and while we won't know the full range of effects it will have on the pages of brands and publishers for some time, Facebook has provided a few clues to help administrators optimize their pages ahead of its rollout.

First, let's take a look at the changes. The new News Feed is cleaner, more visual and has more filtering controls. The size of photos and videos have been enlarged, making the quality of visual media more important than ever before. That's great news for magazines and other publishers with deep photo resources; for publishers that rely largely on Creative Commons or stock imagery, the challenge is greater.

In addition to larger photos and videos, Facebook has introduced a number of "sub feeds" to give users greater control over what updates appear in their streams. Users can opt to view updates from All or just Close Friends, only photo updates, only music updates, only updates from pages and public figures they follow (i.e., subscribe to), only updates from Groups and only updates from game apps. They can also view updates in reverse-chronological order.

While these changes could have a negative impact on publishers' pages, particularly if users opt to spend all or most of their time viewing updates from their Close Friends, Facebook insists it could be a boon as well, because users can switch over to the "Following" feed to get updates outside their friend circles precisely when they want them.

Beyond those changes, the look of the new News Feed is far more consistent across smartphones, tablets and desktops than previously. For a visual overview of the alterations, click through our slideshow, or check out Facebook's official overview.
Optimization Strategies

Publishers can make some changes to their content to take advantage of the coming changes. Here's a few recommendations:

1. Invest in high-quality, high-resolution images. High-quality imagery is more important than ever before. Photos now make up nearly half of all News Feed stories, according to Facebook, up from 30% just a year ago. That growth is likely to accelerate now that Facebook is enlarging the size of photos in the News Feed. Facebook recommends publishers use images with a width of at least 552 pixels. As a bonus, publishers no longer need to upload full-sized images next to their story links. According to one Facebook source, Facebook will now display thumbnail photos pulled from story pages at the same size as images uploaded directly to the News Feed. As such, it's important for publishers to upload thumbnail images with a width of at least 552 pixels on their sites.


2. Improve your cover photo. Publishers may have had little incentive to invest in a great cover photo until now because it never showed up in the News Feed. That's about to change. When a group of friends Like or otherwise interact with a Facebook page, that Page may be highlighted in the News Feed with its cover photo on display. As Facebook says, "Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page's story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories."

3. Post about trending topics. News stories about a single topic will be highlighted in thumbnail-rich carousels in the News Feed, like the one featuring Taylor Swift stories, below. Thus it may be more advantageous to share trending rather than outlier stories on Facebook.

4. Share different types of media. If publishers want to have a presence in users' sub feeds — namely, their photo and music feeds — consider sharing more photos, and linking a company Spotify or Rdio account to Facebook.

Identify any other optimization strategies for the new News Feed? Please share them in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Facebook

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