Facebook has turned on the switch for its brand new homepage design, and get ready for the exorbitant amount of rage from Facebook users who just don’t really get why Facebook needs to change. I’ll give you a hint – it has a + and comes with Google. Here’s a rundown of the new changes you can expect to see.
The new design is still a tad annoying, but it has somewhat improved. You now have a smaller feed now slotted up on the right hand side above the chat, meaning that you can now know what your friends are doing even when you are playing Tetris – and you can view it on the spot. You seem to only be able to comment on your own posts and not on others, which is annoying but at least you can continue the conversation without flipping forwards and back to different sections of Facebook to do such thing.
Another thing you will have noticed on the feed is this new thing on posts. They are the new way Facebook determines as “top stories”. Previously, they were tabs which you had to switch back and forwards. Now, Facebook has opted for a more Google “Priority Inbox” sort of way, where it will prioritise messages and status to the top before letting the rest follow on. Plus, you can also tell Facebook what to prioritise, so it can get better at choosing posts.
Interesting, but in some cases, I much prefer to only have it as a linear stream of stuff.
In addition, Facebook is making the thumbnail sizes of photo uploads a bit bigger. This means you can actually see what you are looking at rather than a severely resized image that doesn’t really mean anything unless you opened it.
It appears to be a small refresh, with profiles and many other pages not changed by the new UI. However, with rumours of a change in profile coming soon at the upcoming f8 developer conference, we could see part two of this design roll out.
Facebook users, however, don’t like change. But many seem to not recognise that Facebook needs to continue to reinvent, despite the annoyed users, and is probably motivated by MySpace and how long did it take to reinvent itself to a much sleeker design from a free-for-all chaotic mess that eventually brought its demise as many people were more focused on friends rather than sparkly lettering notoriously featured on teenage girls MySpace profiles.
The timing couldn’t get any more coincidential as Google recently announced that it will be opening Google+ to all the public. So if you don’t like Facebook, then you should move. In fact, can you do that with Twitter as well? I don’t want teenage fangirls for Justin Bieber to start pushing up related trending topics about him or attacking people out of nowhere.