Facebook's new profile design is all about tabs
The new profile design will, as we have known for a while, be centered on tabs. Profiles will be broken off into five separate tabs: Feed, Info, Wall, Photos, and Applications. Facebook's latest round of screenshots seems to indicate that users will also have the ability to add additional tabs, with the inclusion of a plus sign to the right of the Applications tab.
(Credit:
Facebook)
Breaking down information into tabs will make the new Facebook profiles seem far less cluttered--a growing concern with users, especially with the addition of applications--and improve load times. A major change included in this release will be the publisher box.
(Credit:
Facebook)
As the screenshot notes, the new Publisher box will not only allows your friends to add wall posts and links to your profile, but it also enables you to add content to your own profile.
The Publisher will be the place where you upload photos, video, notes, links, and posts on your own wall. Centralizing all of these actions is great for Facebook, since having to upload all of these different types of content in different places can be confusing at times.
The Info tab looks pretty much exactly the same as the current Info section on Facebook profiles. If you want to check it out, here's Facebook's album. The Photos tab does, however have some changes worth noting.
(Credit:
Facebook)
The new layout for Photos is a little different than what we are used to, but there is one notable change: there is no longer any distinction between photos that you have tagged of yourself and those that others have tagged of you. I don't really see a problem with that, but others may not like this change.
(Credit:
Facebook)
Thankfully, applications have finally been given their own tab. Facebook profiles have slowly become cluttered since the introduction of applications, but now they are going to be separated from the main content of your profile. This will certainly be a welcome change to a lot of Facebook users.
Facebook reminds us that these designs are not necessarily final and that things could change before they roll out the new design. Facebook's user base has not been very receptive to change in the past, especially when Facebook introduced the News Feed in the fall of 2006.
News Feed certainly ended up to be Facebook's killer feature, despite all of that criticism, so it will be interesting to see how people react to this fairly radical redesign.
Harrison Hoffman is a tech enthusiast and co-founder of LiveSide.net, a blog about Windows Live. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
- by CHantzis March 29, 2009 10:59 AM PDT
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