Facebook May Urge Users to Complete Their Profiles

You may see Facebook urging you to take action on your sparsely populated profile, as the company is reportedly testing a new profile completion meter in users’ “about” sections of t...
Facebook May Urge Users to Complete Their Profiles
Written by Josh Wolford
  • You may see Facebook urging you to take action on your sparsely populated profile, as the company is reportedly testing a new profile completion meter in users’ “about” sections of their Timeline.

    Spotted by Inside Facebook, the new completion meter appears at the top right corner of the “about page” and features a blue loading bar with a “% Complete” message below. As of right now, the test doesn’t include any additional information on the complete bar, just a percentage.

    Here’s what it looks like:

    In the future, a completion meter could also provide more information to users – mainly specifics on exactly what information they need to add to complete their profiles – location, interests, work experience, school, etc. Just because this completion meter currently doesn’t do that in its test doesn’t mean that it won’t ever do that. Or, since Facebook performs hundreds of tests a year, many of which never come to fruition – there’s a chance you’ll never see a completion meter on your Timeline.

    But “profile completion” trackers aren’t really unheard of on social media sites. LinkedIn has one, as does Google+. And they’re even more common of other sites like dating sites and employment sites.

    Having people fill out more info about themselves is beneficial to Facebook in a obvious way: advertising. Every bit of information you give Facebook is another way for marketers to target you via some criteria.

    Have you seen the completion meter on your profile?

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