Justin Gallagher

Not privacy related, I thought this bit from TheRumpus’s article on Facebook privacy was particularly interesting:

…when we streamlined the browsing of photo albums, you know, where you can click ‘next’ above the photo, and the page stays the same except you get the next photo? We did tests on that, and actually found out it increased the number of page views by 77%, essentially because we were reducing 77% of the page load, and therefore it was loading faster, and thus generating more clicks. We not only reduced our bandwidth, and how much we have to pay for our Internet, but we made the site faster and increased the clicks-per-minute, which is what we’re truly interested in.

I know many sites that resist “ajax” or asynchronous loading of content, or make articles into multi-page pieces in an attempt to increase page views and, therefore, ad impressions.Through testing, Facebook has determined that, contrary to popular belief, an asynchronous user experience that allows users to get the content they want faster actually results in more page views and ad impressions.