A brief overview on the Facebook Redesign
July 31, 2008 – 3:23 pm by Kyle WelterAt 6:32 pm on July 21st, Facebook released the highly awaited Facebook redesign. As written on the official Facebook profile previews page, the goal of the effort is to create, “a redesigned profile aimed at making things simpler, cleaner, and more relevant, while still giving you control over your own profile. We want profiles to be a destination to learn about and interact with your friends.” The Facebook team decided that the best way to release the redesign is through an opt-in trial period in which users can log in to the updated layout and send feedback and suggestions directly to developers. In order to access the site, visit http://new.facebook.com
While the color scheme remains the exact same blue/white motif, we do see a substantial amount of format and organizational changes which aim to create a simpler and cleaner browsing experience. The homepage has been slightly edited through the shift of the “applications” left-hand menu into its own tab along the top and a consolidation from a three-column format to a simplified two-column design. Keeping with the trend of simplification, Facebook has seemed to have eliminated the ad space on the left column and allocated more room for the News Feed. Many users were hoping for color scheme options, but their wishes were clearly not granted in attempt to keep the brand image clear and consistent.
This emphasis on the News Feed seems to be based off of the success that FriendFeed is having with their network-aggregating news feed platform. In addition, we see the recent addition of feed item commenting and the creation of News Feed Preferences which were released this morning. Preferences allow the user to optimize the stories which appear in their feed based on target and topic (ie- more photo stories or more stories about Elvis Presley). Through this change, we see a more streamlined and focused approach to usability which should ultimately make a more relevant experience for everyone.
Moving onto the profile interface, through the use of tabbed navigation, Facebook has successfully cut down on the amount of clutter which previously littered the general profile page. These tabs eliminate the MASSIVE flat-profile page and segment it nicely into four smaller sections including wall, info, photos and boxes. The latter holds the profile application boxes which create a more focused and simplified profile page. Users can also designate a tab to their favorite application which when clicked, expands into a full-page experience. For the marketing side of things, it is exciting to see such a heavy emphasis being placed on applications. It will be interesting to see how the application economy fares through all of these changes and we, as marketers should hope that they benefit.
A second drastic change lies in the combination of the mini-feed and wall into one singular wall. Wall posts, picture tags and comments all show up in one feed which aggregates them all into one experience. In addition, users can even import their own RSS feed, pictures from Picasa and Flickr, and even their Pandora account into their wall.
It will be exciting to see how consumers react to all of these changes and I expect to see a major uproar from many users who are comfortable and happy with the current Facebook layout. Similar to the event of the News Feed creation of September 5th, 2006, I’m waiting for the thousands of groups donning the titles of “One million strong against the Facebook Revamp” but these late adopters and laggards will eventually come to terms with it and realize that the new layout has fulfilled the goal of creating a simpler, cleaner and more efficient experience.
