JordanH.net

Actually, I Like the New Facebook

// September 13th, 2008 // Technology

Well, it’s the most controversial change in the history of Facebook, but I’ve decided where I am in all of this. I like the new Facebook. Why? It’s clean, consistent, and developed around the user and the masses of applications that have sprung up over Facebook’s Developer Platform.

The old Facebook was great, but it was never designed to deal with the millions of apps which were made, and the result was that every profile was cluttered with an app here and an app there. It all looked quite messy, like MySpace. The new design, however, was created to cater for applications. For example, the wall now actually pulls the latest information from the user’s apps, and can actually keep the page readable. Seperate tabs for information is a good idea too. If I want my friends to view my Flickr pics in a full page, they can view the tab instead of going to the website.

If I was given £1 every time I’d rejected an invite to join a group against the new Facebook, I’d truly be a millionaire by now! One thing that strikes me is the lack of peoples’ common sense – instead of creating hundreds of groups for the same thing, create one and have an overwhelming number of people there! In fact I’ve had quite a chuckle at some of the names of these 300+ groups – “The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS – Change it BACKKKK“, “1m Against The New Facebook” (which oddly has less than 2,000 members), “Bring back the old Facebook or we’re off to MySpace”.

The last of these group names pretty much sums up the whole divide. Before the changes, Facebook was turning into something as cluttered as MySpace. One of the main aims of the redesign was to try and stop the clutter from getting out of hand. The problem is that the people who want the sites to be organised and clean are the web designers, the developers, the “webbies”. But the people who are protesting against the new Facebook are precisely the opposite, the “MySpace crowd”, the ones who actually like their pages filled to the brim with messy apps.

The overall issue is how to handle the conflicts of interest between the 100m users who use Facebook.