Facebook turned 6 this week, surpassed 400 million users and started rolling out a re-design to the site… it’s been a busy week! While it’s definitely significant that Facebook has reached 400 million users in 6 years, I’d like to focus on the redesign for the rest of this post… although I’ll first say “Happy Birthday Facebook”… and congratulations!
On to the redesign
Anytime Facebook goes through a re-design (which it does frequently), it always seems to be met with anger, frustration and contempt by it’s users… I guess trying to make 400 million people happy isn’t easy! While I’m in no way a Facebook power user, I do use it enough that frustration can kick in when a change roles out, especially if they muck with my processes. The last update in 2009 changed a number of things which at first I didn’t like, but I eventually got use to, so I was a little worried about the new redesign when I heard about it. After seeing that my profile had been updated to the redesign this morning, I have to say I like it!
While the changes aren’t drastic, there’s enough difference that it will take a bit to get use to.
The most notable change is the notification area to the right of the Facebook logo near the top. This is my favorite feature. Requests, Messages and Notifications are now viewable in a little drop down instead of navigating away from the main page. Also, the search box has been moved over next to the notification area so it’s a little more prominent in you periphery as search will become more and more important to Facebook.
The left side has been changed to combining a number of navigation elements into the area. Some groups and applications have been moved up again to the left and online status is there too. All this is an effort to keep everything within reach and you’re never far away from the front page as you work with photos, status updates and messages. You can also quickly see which friends are online.
The right side hasn’t changed much save for the account drop down at the top. Here, all your settings are grouped along with the logout button… nice and convenient.
All-in-all not a crazy update… but the few changes do definitely clean things up a bit.
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[...] it’s new privacy features gone mad, or redesigns to the site itself, Facebook always seems to divide its userbase between good, non-chalant and hate. Now a new [...]
[...] it’s new privacy features gone mad, or redesigns to the site itself, Facebook always seems to divide its userbase between good, non-chalant and hate. Now a new [...]