Facebook invite-only event rumor rundown

Video chat on Facebook.com? Site redesign? An iPad app? Criticisms of The Social Network?

Facebook is hosting an invite-only event on Wednesday morning at its headquarters in Palo Alto, and nobody has any idea what’s the occasion.

Rather, everyone has ideas but no one knows for certain.

One of the most plausible speculations is that, like Twitter has done over the past few weeks, Facebook will be rolling out a site redesign. Evidence already exists to support this theory, namely the fact that Facebook Chat already got a makeover on Tuesday.

The chat windows have been widened a little in order to squeeze in both users’ profile pictures, which appear just once before each unbroken stream of messages from one user. For whatever reason, Facebook has done away with timestamps in the chat window. [Editor's note: Timestamps appear on mouse rollover.] Also missing from previous versions is the Windows-style minimize button, an action still possible by simply clicking either the top or bottom bar (where the other chatter’s name is printed).

Though the chat windows needed to be enlarged to fit profile pictures alongside messages, could another reason for the change be related to Facebook’s newly-formed partnership with Skype? Maybe we’ll have video chat embedded in the site much sooner than anyone expected.

Beyond chat, Facebook could be revamping user profile pages to resemble Places pages more closely, eliminating the confusing patchwork of designs that currently litter the site.

Less likely guesses about Facebook’s event on Wednesday run the gamut from a possible phone announcement (CEO Mark Zuckerberg pretty much put this one to rest already) to an iPad app launch (who needs an event for that?).

To add to the mystery and speculation surrounding the event, on Tuesday night around 10pm PST, users (including myself) flocked to Twitter en masse to report that Facebook wasn’t working. The downtime didn’t last much longer than half an hour, but that’s just enough for everyone to wonder what’s happening behind the scenes. (Though it was the site’s second downtime in two weeks, Facebook is no Twitter; these instances are usually few and far between.)

Whatever gets announced tomorrow, it most certainly won’t be Zuckerberg’s two thumbs up for The Social Network.

image source: https://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/10/05/facebook-announce-phone-wednesday/