On the Facebook Profile Redesign
Seeing as the most commented post in the history of this site was one ripping Facebook to shreds, I thought it only fair to report some potentially good news about the social networking standard. For those that do not know, Facebook is getting a much needed redesign.
As reported by Business Week, the Facebook profile is getting a redesign. This actually was news to me, though the Facebook Developer Blog gave a preview in late February. The article references the cluttered feel of Facebook, which gets away from the original, simplistic design. During my rant I actually listed several “features” that contributed to my hatred of Facebook, and many of these are causes for the redesign to occur.
This all comes back to one of my biggest problems with Facebook: the desire for expansion. Rather than taking a task (keeping college students in touch) and doing it well (the original Facebook), the company decided to attempt to bring in users from everywhere and let them do whatever they wanted. By now there is an application for just about anything, rather than the focus being on communication.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with trying to reach a broader audience. However, that does not mean you have to change your product. I think if Facebook was content with its community, every college student ever, they would be viewed in a much better light. Now? They are just another MySpace. In fact, this is a major portion of why the design team elected to make these changes.
So what exactly will the new design look like? From the photo in the Business Week article, it looks as if the iPhone Facebook page is a point of inspiration. It brings back the sense of simplicity that the current iteration of the site lacks. By organizing different profile sections into tabs, the designers are hoping to break up the current chaos of bumper stickers and super-walls (I hope).
I barely use Facebook at this point (shocker I know), but perhaps these changes will make the experience more pleasant for when I am there. Do you hate Facebook as much as I do? What do you think of the planned changes? They will go live within a few weeks.
Image from the Facebook Developer Blog
May 18th, 2008 | 2:22 am
You know how I feel about Facebook, and so does Dave or whoever I argued against. I can’t remember his name and I refuse to go back and look. I hate when people say Facebook is a great social networking site, for jobs and such and people who work together. Just email eachother instead of having a profile. It is absolutely idiotic. And you and everyone else need to deactivate their account. I’m going to destroy Facebook.
May 18th, 2008 | 1:03 pm
Facebook needs a REAL redesign, changing the table layout of the profile page and adding 2 tabs is just not enough. Their aesthetic is old as hell too, facebook needs to liven up their design.
Plus looking at that profile preview how different is that new profile, really?
May 18th, 2008 | 5:03 pm
@Dan: In that photo the only noticeable difference is the tabs, though both the article and the Facebook Developer blog seems to talk about the redesign in much more drastic light. This makes me wonder if there are other design rehauls we have not seen yet. I guess only time will tell.
May 18th, 2008 | 9:42 pm
After reading the Preparing for the New Facebook Profile Design article from the Facebook Developers weblog, it seems like the changes they plan to make might actually make Facebook worse.
With the new design, the Feed tab is front-and-center on users’ profiles. - I really dislike the Feed, so I’m really not excited to hear that this is a new central feature.
Application Tabs - According to the article, users will be able to create multiple tabs to separate different portions of their profile. In my opinion, this only makes things more complicated (as opposed to more simple.) My biggest complaint with Facebook as of late is the clutter. They need get rid of clutter (i.e. Applications) and I don’t think that tabs are going to help.
There were also some other changes listed in the post, but they didn’t seem as drastic as the ones I mentioned. To truly judge the new layout I would need to actually use it (not just see pictures of it) but for now I’m not very impressed with what I see.
May 20th, 2008 | 1:40 pm
Honestly, a while back when facebook became accesible to EVERYONE I was furious and thought they had killed themselves and thought they will get fazed out in a year or two but as time goes by I start to realized that opening it was the best move they could have made. If they were still focused on college and connecting college kids No one will take them seriously, they will not be worth 15 billion today and facebook would have been a Fad that might have been fazed out by now.
What sells facebook is the REAL organized information they have on there (compared to Myspace). They have millions of profiles filled with real names, addresses, like and dislikes, it is growing to be a yellowbook, or as they like to call it a directory of people.
Now dont get me wrong I am not drinking the Zuckerberg Kool-Aid, facebook is not perfect and A LOT needs to be changed but I think they have a pretty unique direction that they are pioneering which means they will make a lot of mistakes and if they don’t make the right moves they will DIE.
From what I have been reading it seems they want to make facebook a PLATFORM in other words and operating system on the web, this makes sense if u see facebook as datacenter, with their so called social graph it has limitless capabilities and people can build so many useful apps on this database. They are practically like a privately owned DMV database and so much info can be mined by application creators to help us communicate but facebook is making three MAJOR mistakes.
Does not allow our data to be PORTABLE hence we are locked into their site to interact with friends on this VAST network we call the internet
Should STOP making applications and focus beign a social DIRECTORY eg. facebook Chat
Should find a better application distribution startegy that will both help us sort through the garbage apps as well not suffocate us with all the App info.
When these three big tasks have been solved facebook will be sitting next to google in controlling the worlds data.
May 20th, 2008 | 2:54 pm
@Adim You make a lot of great points. I obviously agree with the fact that Facebook is successful, I just wish they would have stuck with the original college exclusive ways out of integrity. I know, the ultimate goal is to make money and Zuckerberg is doing that well.
You also raised some key problems Facebook has to overcome. One additional problem they will have to overcome is the perception (fueled by people like me) that there site is horrible. I think at this point even though I use Facebook I would consider myself a hater, and I know I am not alone. Therefore they now have to combat their own mistakes in addition to the perception that is now held by their original demographic.
May 20th, 2008 | 7:03 pm
LOL, I was once a hater, but now I would consider myself a USER (Neither love or hate). My facebooking has definately reduced maybe because I am on coop and it is banned at work but sometimes I will go three days without loggin in.
I do not think that facebook is worried about fixing the perception of the original demographic and honestly I do not think they need to, hear me out. Look at Apple for example We both love Apple products and I can say I am an Apple Fanboy but you know there are people who hate Apple for no reason. They hate the hype that comes with their products, they hate the devotion of its users and hence they just HATE the brand they do not understand why a tech company should have a following. That is the same with facebook many people hate facebook for some reason and other people live and breathe facebook. Just like Apple, facebook can live of its fan base because those are the people that give it majority of it page loads or whatever they are looking for. Many companies know everyone can’t love you or your product but I think what is key is that you continue to make those people that love what you do HAPPY, after a while due to facebook fan boys smothering the haters with the lets say good features or products like in the case of Apple the HATERS will start to crack.
@Luke, you know sometimes people want to find out what their friends are doing/ up to without calling or email (maybe because they have nothing to say) facebook can be helpful there.
May 22nd, 2008 | 12:50 am
[...] wrote this post because I found Justin cady’s take on the whole facebook problem (Which I believe has a lot of truth) very interesting so I am linking to the post and you can [...]
May 24th, 2008 | 5:11 pm
I really do not understand why people like to hate on Facebook so vehemently. If you don’t like it, no one is forcing you to use it. It is an alternative way of keeping in touch with friends, which is nice, because not everyone wants to go around calling and e-mailing everyone they know each night. It’s a neat and fun way to aggregate and distribute information.
Also, Justin, while I love you to death, not liking Facebook for no longer being restricted to college students is essentially the same as digging some indie band up until they actually have a popular hit (oh no, the horror!), and I think that is pretty dumb. The purpose of the site did not change, despite the new members, just like the music does not change, despite the new fans. Granted, it CAN change, and usually does, but it is generally not popularity’s fault.
May 25th, 2008 | 4:29 pm
@Jaws: You are right to some degree. There are some parallels to the indie band thing, but at the same time I think Facebook opening up was different. It is more like being at a party with all college kids, but next week your parents and your 12 year-old sister are invited too. That is what happened with Facebook. I am not really concerned with its popularity. Whereas it was a separate entity from MySpace at the beginning, it is now virtually the same thing.
May 25th, 2008 | 9:05 pm
i have never had a myspace or a facebook or anything so i am in some uncharted territories but being an outsider and reading everyone’s points of view i find some things interesting. i think jaws makes a good point. if you, justin, and all the others that absolutle hate facebook hate it so much, why do you still use it? just delete yours and all of your anger is solved. like i said i have never had one and i do not feel like i am out of the loop and can’t find out what my friends are doing.
i understand and agree with the indie thing and i also understand and agree with justins point. i like both sides. i understand justin’s point about not wanting all these “little kids” invading what was once the “college domain”. i am going to throw something out there that seems stupid and immature but it is just a fact and i know for a fact justin will back me up on this point. sometimes when you find something prematurely you are proud of it and don’t want others to ruin “your” product. for instance, justin found out about napoleon dynamite like 3 months before the movie came out and told me instantly (i am not taking credit for finding out about it, but i am now one of the two who knows about this movie). no one heard of this movie, but me and justin went to see it opening day. i cannot remember exactly, but i know there was basically no one in the theaters. the movie wasn’t my favorite, but i enjoyed it and had some fun quoting it afterwards. i am pretty sure justin felt the same way. overall i had a positive take on the movie. 6 months later, literally like 6 months, everyone else found out about it and were obsessed with it. everyone was quoting it and acting like they were awesome because they knew about this “new” movie. shirts were made and everything. I immediately started hating the movie because now everyone was so obsessed with it and acted so sweet about it and i knew that me and justin had saw it so long ago. now i know this sounds immature and stupid but don’t act like you don’t do the same things. i can easily see how this ties in with justin’s point and is no longer a society of college students but a forum for younger kids to take surveys and tell each other which they like more: chocolate/vanilla.
May 25th, 2008 | 9:27 pm
@Mark: I laughed out loud at chocolate/vanilla, but with applications that is what Facebook has become. And good example with the Napoleon Dynamite story.
May 27th, 2008 | 8:52 pm
I understand the desire to sort of have something that is your own and be able to say “oh, look what I found, isn’t that so cool?” but I figure it is always better to share that stuff than to lock it away and snicker at people as they come across it later in life. Whenever I hear any new band that does not sound like some dude farting into a trumpet, I let everyone who may like it know. I don’t wait for them to get big and then go “I listened to them BEFORE they were cool.” Whenever people say that I think, “Oh, thanks you selfish twit, I could have been listening to this for 3 months, but instead you let it linger in obscurity for a little while longer, vainly attempting to prevent the inevitable just so you could make yourself feel better about an accomplishment that isn’t even yours!”
June 1st, 2008 | 4:58 pm
thats exactly why i didnt tell anybody about napoleon dynamite. i wanted to claim it as an accomplishment of mine.
June 5th, 2008 | 7:29 pm
The indie parallel is bush league, because more often than not when a band gets more popular their sound and music change, and they begin to sell out to their natural form. Facebook turned gay, like Jaws. Justin made a great point about being at a party with all college kids, then the next week your family is invited along with your 90 year old grandma.