Angry Web Designer

The Bad

Dear Facebook, give it a rest already!

With its latest design overhaul lets try and look at what Facebook is trying to do and how they failed at it. Also a quick look at why they keep changing their god damned minds. This story couldn’t be resisted. It’s caused a huge uproar in the whole Facebook user-base/community.

Trying to be Twitter

The first thing noticeable about the design is its resemblance to Twitter. From the familiar story list layout to the similar sized thumbnail avatars. This is just blatantly Facebook trying to be Twitter OR they are running out of ideas. One interesting excerpt maybe proving an intentional design is what I found on their response to the thousands, maybe millions, of hate emails about the new design:

With the recent home page changes, we’re trying to present the right balance between what’s happening right now and what’s interesting over a longer period of time. We realize that both are important and getting them both right is crucial for the product to work. In the last few weeks, you’ve seen us shift the main emphasis towards real-time conversations and updates as the entry point to Facebook. We’re working hard to make this stream more valuable, and also to build out the richness and relevance of the Highlights section.

Now in my opinion (IMO) Facebook isn’t for “what’s happening right now” rather it should be a central profile hub and keeping up with friends in a long-term basis. What I think Facebook has done is forget what they are actually doing. Having an up-to-date to the second status feed of all your friends is nice but its not exactly new. What I want Facebook to do is make itself a platform for cross-authentication and profile sharing on the web. Facebook Connect is the right direction, live status-wall-feed-thingy updates isn’t, leave that to Twitter, they have rightfully claimed that concept.
In a blog post by Facebook showing off the new design pre-launch Jolene Freeland Erola said:

If I wanted Twitter Id sign up for it!!!

That about sums it up.

Everything on one page, check!

The home page is the worst design it has ever been. The mix of the new wall with the social sidebars is just too overpowering, displaying to much information at a time. If they are trying to be Twitter then they missed one major part, simplicity. I even get confused what’s an Ad or not because generally the right sidebar has always, and still is on some pages, just for advertisements. So I don’t look at the right sidebar and it makes whatever is cluttered there a waste of space.

Why the change, again?

I don’t know for sure, something maybe only “Zucks” knows. It could be that he doesn’t want to pay a web design team just to faff about while the current design simmers.

But if they didnt keep up and fresh it would just turn into what MySpace is, I really extremely hate MySpace by the way. Keeping Facebook fresh and new doesn’t mean they have to change the page layout and skeleton all the time. They just need to focus on new core features of Facebook and target an area where they can kill it, not stealing other website’s features.

If anyone knows why they changed apart from their predictable BS in the blog posts, comment it up! Or any humorous reasons, I do like a good laugh.

What they should do to fix this mess

Straight back to the old design for the home page. But for the long run here’s a little list of what they should do to fix this and aim their hours at:

• Listen to their users, if its rubbish then maybe its time to re-evaluate the design. They are using it after all.
• Being new and fresh for website tech is all well and good but if your not a web designer then it can be confusing.
• Look at extending and improving the core of Facebook (social mapping) and further improve what they already have.

Just like the Terms of Use agreement they should claim they messed up and back flip on it.

To read the blog posts on Facebook relating to the new design here are the links:

Welcome to your new Home Fail page
Responding to your feedback

Same thoughts about the new design? Let me know.

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