Another Facebook redesign: Birthdays are important

Guess what? Facebook is tweaking its home page design yet again--something that invariably seems to tick off members at first before they realize they actually don't mind that much. The company seems to have been previewing the new look to advertisers, one of whom forwarded the details along to industry blog Mashable.

It doesn't look too different. The biggest change is that Facebook's home page news feed will now be divided up into "top news" and a more real-time "recent activity" view.

The explanation:

"Facebook is simplifying the user experience on the home page by introducing Top News and Recent Activity streams. Now, when users log on to Facebook for the first time in a while, they will see the most important stories that they missed while they were away. From there, users can navigate to the real-time stream and toggle between both views throughout their sessions. In addition to making it easier for users to view content that is most relevant to them, this change also speeds up the time it takes for the home page to load and makes birthday reminders more prominent."

A screenshot from a document that Facebook sent to brand advertisers about an impending redesign.

(Credit: Facebook)

Note the mention of birthday reminders. On a given member's birthday, a pop-up version of Facebook's "gifts" application appears on that user's profile so that friends can purchase virtual gifts to display. The "gifts" feature is also currently the center of the fledgling e-commerce plans that Facebook has been bouncing around for quite some time now: It's currently the hub of its "credits" virtual currency, and advertisers can purchase sponsored gifts that members can give to one another. These have also been tested out with a select number of nonprofits.

For users, it sounds like Facebook is correcting some of the changes that members seemed to complain about the most with its last redesign. "Facebook has also put information back into the stream that people have asked for, including photo tags, friend acceptances, relationships, event RSVPs and group memberships," the explanation obtained by Mashable read. Also in there will be information about what a user's friends do on brands' "fan" pages, potentially increasing the exposure for advertisers and marketers looking to jump on the social-ads bandwagon.

Why so much redesigning? Facebook's executive team likes to pitch the company as a living, evolving product. At an event last week in Palo Alto, Calif., Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg underscored Facebook's belief in constant "iteration," a term you'll also often hear CEO Mark Zuckerberg using.

"The great thing about Facebook is (that) we are constantly evolving the site and constantly evolving the usage," she said. "People protested the new home page redesign, but engagement went way up and users continued to grow."

[cnote1287]

People will most likely complain about this for a week or 2 and then get used to it like the old design (maybe not tho because it isn't such a big redesign)

[basraw]

like we can't make anything out on the screenshot!

[PandaSage1221]

Sounds like a good redesign. I'm sure I'll get something out of it when I actually log in to facebook. Which is about twice a month now.

I think 4 years of facebook is my limit. I'm over it.

[xim1970]

So is inventing new words a job title now? Did you know "iteration" actually means:
Main Entry: iteration
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: redundancy
Synonyms:
emphasis, monotony, repetition
Main Entry: frequency
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: commonness, repetitiveness
Synonyms:
abundance, beat, constancy, density, frequentness, iteration, number, oscillation, periodicity, persistence, prevalence, pulsation, recurrence, regularity, reiteration, repetition, rhythm
Notes: a single to-and-fro movement of an air particle is called a cycle and the number of cycles that occur in a second is known as the frequency of a sound

See this page for the definition: http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/iteration

So according to the synonyms, nothing will change...
According to Zuckerberg "we are constantly evolving the site and constantly evolving the usage", and yet he uses a synonym for nothing changing...hmmm

[WillKill07]

@xim1970: Look up iterative enhancement. The dictionary doesn't quite cut it with software development.

[T543212345]

Silly goose, you are looking at a thesaurus, not a dictionary. The entry in question chose one of the several meanings of the word iteration and provided synonyms. Look at a DICTIONARY definition of iteration and you will see he is, in fact, using the term in a perfectly appropriate way.

[peterfeld]

I just think it's wrong to buy into Facebook's mantra that their site changes are hated at first, then ultimately accepted. The major change they made in March, switching to a Twitter-like real time news feed unfiltered by your level of interest in your various friends, upped the spam quotient past the tipping point and positively ruined the site. Nothing will fix that but a complete rollback, which they clearly don't intend. I don't think the full impact of this has been registered, since the influencer irritation with Facebook and the decline in usage by everyone I know has been masked by new user numbers that continue to grow simply because of their current positioning as social media category leader. The majority of their changes are aimed at making the site more business-friendly, which is good for their revenue, but it comes at the cost of quality of user experience. They shouldn't lull themselves into thinking that user patience is endless.

[xtremist5150]

Good, I hated how birthdays are now shoved into a dark corner where no one can see them. Used to be easy to see someone's birthday, now one has to really search for it.

[nataliev39]

Ultimately, I am excited about the redesign of Facebook. However, I must say that it always is a little annoying having to get used to a new Facebook layout which I feels happens like three times a year. It does put a good perspective on the ever-changing world of the Internet. If Facebook always stayed the same and was never updated, I am sure that we would have left it in the dust when Twitter came out. So, as annoying as it is to have to readjust to new layouts, I think that they are great and this new one, with the Live Feed, really keeps me entertained! Also, Birthdays are important, I hope I get gifts on mine!