Comments on: Hands-on with the new Facebook home page

As promised, Facebook delivers a new Twitter-like home page design. All the photos and apps are still there, but the friend stream is most prominent.

[bdunlay]

you sure have a lot of messages in your inbox...

From the third to last paragraph of the story:
"One nit: Although Facebook calls it the "real-time stream," it doesn't auto-update. You have to refresh the page to get the latest."

Rafe, I haven't used the new home page yet, but the old one (current for me) has a "Live Feed" option that DOES auto-update. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the new version or what, but I just wanted to weigh in.

[CortalUX]

.... no the new home page doesn't have this option.

[tvamy]

Wonder when my page will change? Also trying out facebook connect here for first time. Thanks!

[coryschulz]

So far I've enjoyed every change to the Facebook layout over the years, and it looks like this is one of their best yet. Can't wait to try it out.

I'm sure there is going to be another uproar of "They destroyed Facebook... again!!!" with groups titled "1,000,000 People Against the Latest Facebook Design!!!" but these people are all idiots and don't know anything about evolution.

[CortalUX]

bit of a sweeping comment. for instance, I loved the previous change, and while this change does have some benefits, I do happen to dislike some changes which make the service [for me] a worse site to use. while I may get the service for "free," I still sell my information [while not my data] to advertisers, and have a right to voice my opinion

[themd]

Facebook hasn't change yet for me...

[devon2013]

Dude... You should probably consider accepting or rejecting some of those friend requests... And maybe check your Facebook mail every once in a while... There might be something important in there...

[srikanthmanda]

Is the link at the end of the article working? It hasn't for me.

[edgarcayce]

You know, there is a reason why Facebook membership has grown by leaps and bounds and this new homepage isn't it -- by the way, CNET editors, it is HOMEPAGE not HOME PAGE as your auto-edit software corrected it. Most of us Facebook users LEFT Myspace because of its look, format, and feel. Now, the CEO's at Facebook are trying to make Facebook look and behave more and more like Myspace. ***?! Are they really that stupid not to "get it" that the reason it is so popular is because it is NOT Myspace? Clean, clear, streamlined, uncluttered, and consistent is why we came to Facebook. Now, I am not so sure I want to stay around the site much longer.

[x0xaliishaax0x]

I am very liberal towards the changing format of facebook.
I think that with every new layout it leads to great improvement towards the site.
Everyone is acting hasty towards it and n eeds to give it time.
All those complaints will go away i have seen it before with the last layout. You all form groups thinking you would somehow manage to persuade the creators into changing it back; but instead it's you who conforms into realizing you were silly.
No doubt it's going to happen again, but just realize for everyone person that hates this new layout there will be at least ten more who love it.

[theregalone]

They didn't 'go away' at all. The creators essentially told people that they would have to deal with it -not the same thing. When it became clear that they were not listening to their users at all people gave up. It's pretty cut and dried. There are a great deal of people that are commenting on the facebook blog about how much they dislike it. In addition, Facebook started deleting the profiles of some of the people that were taking part in the groups which said 1,000,000 against the new layout. Quite an effective way to silence unhappy customers. Whilst there are a great deal of people using 'twitter', it never was a serious threat to facebook. There was absolutely no reason to change it in the first place. At least myspace users gave it's users a choice. Part of the reason why facebook was so successful in the first place was because it targeted college students, it was more personal than myspace -where you were always bothered by people that you did not know. The later joiners liked it because it was easy and simple to use, there is no reason to update it every six months.

[facebooksucks]

the new layout is a HUGE step BACKWARDS. It really has taken it down to kindergarten level, which older users may prefer, but the younger users 16-35, who in all fairness the website was originally aimed at, do not like or want these changes. Facebook are mimicing other sites which are not as successful, if the users wanted to use layouts like this they would not be using facebook in the first place. They will be losing many users over this fact.

[hcatre]

if you dislike the new facebook homepage, join the group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=149814785536

[butternutt]

The new Facebook is just one big jumbled, ugly mess. The older formats were cleaner and more visually pleasing. There is something to be said for "white space" and thoughtfully formatted font sizes. If this is what Twitter is like, then I am not interested. Hopefully, Facebook will introduce major customizing options. I wish I could delete the "Highlights" section to create some breathing room on the page.

[sullivanjc]

The one big issue I have is with the highlights section. It's mostly crap and can't be filtered, collapsed or moved (not without hacking anyway). Very, very annoying

[lakeshore-girl]

First off, I am not generally opposed to change and I am not an idiot (as one poster presumed of all who would oppose the Facebook changes). I am a middle-aged, technically savvy individual who has previously used MySpace and Twitter, both of which I abandoned for the more refined, uncluttered format of Facebook, which I've been using for about a year now. I actually liked the last round of changes that many people fought because it brought significant improvements in flexibility and functionality. But this most recent change to the homepage and the profile page are terrible. The large font, suitable for a near-blind person, lends a childish and unprofessional feel and the resulting lack of white space leaves the pages feeling cluttered. The plethora of rounded-corner photos attached to every action are annoyingly large and over-used, only adding to the confusion and disorganized feel.

The homepage is not a "live" feed as promised, but must be manually refreshed to get new items, unlike the old news feed which would refresh itself every 15 minutes or so. Furthermore it is just a big dump of status updates and clutter about people sending gifts and peeps and hatching eggs and finding treasure items... gone are many of the interesting and newsworthy things friends are doing -- who they are now friends with, comments on other friends' photos and links, etc. The filtering by friend list is nice, but this option was available in the old version, just not so obviously positioned. But gone is the ability to fine tune the filtering by choosing more or less about particular friends and/or activities. Now it is all or nothing -- either you see every silly mundane thing your friends are saying and doing or you hide them and see nothing they are doing. And why on earth would I want my own activities (i.e. postings to my friends' walls) to appear in *my* news feed? I am the one who posted it, I already know what it said... I have gotten around this by making a friend list of all my friends and filtering on that list instead of everyone, just to exclude my own activity (how backward is that?). The "highlights" sidebar is just a huge waste space as it primarily shows stuff my friends have already posted which has previously been in my news feed, along with a few strategically placed ads -- I suspect the volume of ads in this area will only increase over time. What happened to the convenient access to my bookmarks, applications, events and page updates? Those things were far more useful to the average user than the things FB considers to be "highlights." I have no idea where I will find new friend requests or other notifications -- either nobody has sent me any in the past 24 hours or I just haven't located them yet.

The profile page is a jumble of he said/she said -- no more distinguishing status posts from wall posts and comments by font size, weight and format -- they all look the same now! And why on earth do I need or want to see my own little picture attached to everything I do on my own page? Not to mention the profile page is no longer chronological, rather is loosely grouped by activity type. Given that they have completely done away with the time stamps, it is now nearly impossible to follow activity in the sequence it happened. It is pretty silly when a comment I make about something appears 6 items *below* the actual posting of the original item.

As far as I can see, the new format adds absolutely no additional functionality, rather decreases functionality and user flexibility and is just an all-around bad design aesthetically, technically and functionally. What on earth was the point of this change?

[glenster47]

I'm a relatively-late Facebook joiner, just since November of 2008. In that time I've had more fun and reconnected with more old friends and associates than I ever imagined. I've got friends I've never met in person and have even organized a group for my fellow high school grads (Class of 1966). I would always encourage folks who weren't already members to join, saying: "It's free, and it's easy once you get the hang of it." Now, the new Facebook format has made my claim false. I'm having trouble navigating and I'm seeing every last comment I make to anyone show up as though I broadcast it to the immediate Facebook membership.

I can only presume that this new formatting is a step taken by Facebook to somehow 'monetize' the network. I am hopeful that negative comments from myself and lots of other Facebook members will encourage them to quickly switch back or at least to come up with a better compromise format.

[charliepatpk]

Not a huge fan of the new FB, because I had finally gotten the old one to perform the way I wanted.

Can anyone shed light on how to disable or dramatically reduce the crap that appers on the right-margin, under highlighgts?? I have no 'edit' command or 'show more/less of' options... I frankly don't care to read 75% of what's being listed.

[alfonsoc]

665 friend request ?! What a heck?!!! You dont want friends?
And 232 inbox messages?!!!weirdo! JK.
I love the new Facebook though! very friendly and keep you in touch with your friends.
I dont see the complicated thing here! pretty easy to use even my 11 grandson can use it!
Peace!

[krosafcheg]

Mark my words, there will be a boot in someone's ass at FB this week. Big discussion around investors worried about FB being hammered by unhappy users. It's gaining ground.

[MsKittenIsh]

Interestingly enough, there is a FB group doing a vote on the new layout right now ... it went from some 83K negative comments/votes to over 100K in the last 15 minutes . This is not good.

[mattmcb123]

Still, the best homepage around is sthrt.com. If you want a true homepage I would check it out.