Facebook appears to be testing a new feature on user streams and members’ profiles, enabling the functionality to submit a comment simply by hitting enter, but also to edit a comment if it has been posted too hastily.
We weren’t the only people that noticed it, HotTips also noticed the small update to the commenting feature this morning. It highlighted that if a user wants to start a new line whilst they are replying to a status update, they will now have to hold Shift-Enter to do so, although this is indicated by a small line of text underneath the comment box itself.
Another subtle change is how replies are handled if they are deleted. Before the change, if you posted a comment and then realised you had misspelled a word or posted in error, you would have to delete your message and then type it out again. With Facebook’s new system, you can click the “X”, the same as you would have done before, but this time the message you posted remains in the input box, allowing you to amend it and repost or ignore it and have it delete permanently.
Think of it as a makeshift edit button, if you will.
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As expected, Facebook users do not like the change. Performing a search on Twitter reveals that the new input method makes Facebook “too messy”, one user suggesting that the company is trying to be too much like its microblogging rival:
With comments now posted using the Enter button, Facebook has introduced yet another feature from FriendFeed, a company it acquired in August 2009. The company introduced “Likes” soon after the acquisition, rolling out real-time comments more recently.
When you log into your Facebook account today, you are going to notice at least one person who doesn’t like the new commenting feature, it’s expected when the service has almost 600 million users.
What do you think? Let us know below.
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