This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

Another great thing about Facebook messages is if you include a link to a video on a site like Viddler, YouTube, etc., it automatically embeds the video so you can watch it right within Facebook.

That Facebook auto link detection feature actually drives me crazy. They have the right idea, but they need to work on predictability; it seems to behave erratically.

Screens Around Town is consistently one of my favorite things you post here.

That Facebook message thingy is sick. I could see why it would irritate people but I dig the concept.

I’ve always thought that Facebook link business was a little weird. Everytime someone shares a link with me, it looks like a mini-advertisement. I think maybe if they play with the formatting to make it look less like an ad, it may flow better.

Facebook link sharing is lovely compared to the atrocity that is snap.com (used by LiveJournal and some WordPress blogs)

Great stuff – love the bearskinrug detail

Another cool feature is the way you can add and remove people you are emailing in facebook, after adding them, all you have to do is hit delete/backspace to remove a person

(as opposed to only being able to click on the ‘x’ to remove it)

Always love Screens around Town … But just how long do you hold entries?? I notice the Oops coupon is either really old or has a generous expiration … :)

I love that Facebook feature. I still get surprised once in a while when surfing Facebook at how they change and improve things quietly in the background. There’s this feeling that they’ve put a lot of thought into being as intuitive and simple as possible.

Have you guys seen the sliders for the news feed preferences? You can access it at the bottom of your home page news feed. Not too sure about how I feel about the way it works now, but it sure is something new (at least to me) and again, very intuitive.

Here’s a screen.

The Bearskinrug example is actually quite confusing. The headers in the left column all link to themselves but the headers in the right column link to other sites (and some aren’t links at all). There isn’t enough visual or conceptual separation between the two types of link. I suppose the target audience of the site is designers so perhaps this doesn’t matter.

@Alvin those sliders have been on Facebook for at least a year and have very little effect as far as I can tell. But I agree that FB in general doesn’t get enough praise for their good design details.

I recently encountered that facebook thing and thought it was an ad! I chose not to include it in my message because I felt odd adding what looked like an advertisement.

hello

We actually implemented a feature similar to MyPunchBowl on NIKEiD. It allows you to sort thousands of sneakers designed by other people by color. Check it out on nikeid.com – click ‘Design Search’ in the upper-right.