The New Face of Facebook

Those of you who are members of Facebook may have noticed a big change recently. Facebook has switched to a new layout, aptly named "New Facebook," which has received a not-so-warm welcome from Facebook users.

Over the past couple of weeks, users were able to preview the new layout. If they decided they didn't like it, they could switch back to the old one, which is exactly what I had done. Today, I was less than thrilled to discover that "New Facebook is now the only Facebook," as were many of my friends judging by the dozens of status changes to "I hate the new Facebook," and the news feed alerting me that so-and-so just joined the Anti-New Facebook group. I had already overheard discussions about the new layout around Marshall's campus as well.

If there is one thing I've noticed from this, it's that people hate change (unless you're talking about the current presidential race). Facebook provides a feedback link, which I'm certain millions of users have used, but will they listen to the millions of users complaints?

It reminds me of when Facebook introduced the news feed and mini feed. Users were very upset over these features because of privacy concerns, and soon started calling it "Stalkerbook." Anti-news feed groups were formed and a lot of feedback was sent, but Facebook decided not to remove the features, claiming that everyone would soon get used to them. Guess what? People got used to them. I eventually decided the news feed made Facebook better, especially for learning about new groups and pages. The news feed helped connect me to several posted items, blogs, articles, pages and videos that I would have never seen had they been buried elsewhere.

Word on the street (or message boards) is that Facebook made the new layout the only layout to accommodate advertisers. I'm not sure if this is entirely the case, but it seems to make sense. I haven't noticed many ads since logging in today, but the ads I have seen are the same size, and still unusual. For example, the current ads on my page are for political dog clothing and the Lauren Conrad diet. The only difference in ads I've noticed is that they are now located on the right side of the page.

As of now, I'm not a fan of the new layout, primarily for convenience. I dislike the multiple tabs on profile pages, although I like the tabs on the home page. I wish I could reduce the amount of white or change the color scheme so the page didn't look like a Word document. I wish photos could be viewed on separate web pages instead of in a tab (so when clicking on a photo on page 8, clicking "back" would send you to page 8, not back to page 1). I know that with time I will get used to the new layout, but for now I might just see what Twitter is all about.


For those of you using Facebook, what do you think of the new layout? What changes would you make? I’m curious to see what others think!