06 December 2010 | Author: N. Hamilton Media copywriter

Facebook gets personal with new-look profiles

Facebook has radically redesigned user profiles in a move that will see a user's personal information and interests clearly displayed - a prospect that has advertisers likely to pay a premium to better target specific social network-using demographics, USA Today has reported.

"Our profiles didn't give a sense of who [people] are. This provides a better snapshot of you." Peter Deng, a Facebook product manager, said, adding that the social network's new-look profiles will put greater emphasis on an individual's details - with a member's employer, hometown, marital status, education history and birth details head-lining user pages.

However, industry experts have said putting a premium on a user's personal details may be an advertising driver rather than a user-enhancing move, as information-rich profiles could be better gleaned from and utilised by advertisers keen to target receptive demographics.

Analyst Marissa Gluck has commented that the new-look profiles seem to display a marked visual emphasis - which also coincides with an industry-wide move from traditional text advertising to multimedia online display advertising - that seems to put display adverts on an equal footing with a user's shared information.

"There definitely seems to be a push to increase the data in profiles and make them more visual," Gluck said. "The ads are also more prominent and almost have parity with profile info."

While social networks MySpace and Twitter have redesigned their own sites in recent months, The Financial Times' tech blog has speculated the move indicates Facebook is adapting LinkedIn's tried-and-tested business networking models rather than indulging in its own advertising-fuelled facelift.

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