Facebook to guilt you into posting with notifiers

5 hrs.

Devin Coldewey

A new feature is being tested on Facebook that relays info about you and your friends' recent?activity, or lack thereof. Some users are already seeing a little message??below the status update field that lets them know either how many of their friends have logged on recently, or gently chides them for not posting anything.

Though the feature is only rolling out to a few users now,?captured by scattered users and first reported by the?Techie Buzz blog, but?chances are it will be live on your page?soon, perhaps alongside some other stats. How many new posts since you last logged in? What comments received the most likes among your friends? Facebook has an ocean of data like this, but exposes surprisingly little to users.

Another new feature is a bigger popup card that shows up when you hover your cursor over a friend or page. Seeing that cover photo might make you click through, and then maybe scroll down and like a few posts.

It may be just the thing to keep users either on the site, clicking and commenting and liking, doing all the things that generate the hits and statistics so important for Facebook's advertisers.

The new popups appear to be live right now, but the activity notifications are still working their way through the system. Log in and see if you're one of the lucky few to get these post-inducing reminders.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

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