Comments on: Facebook's redesign: Time to listen to users?

User sentiment seems decidedly set against the recent home page layout changes. The question now is how, or whether, Facebook will respond.

[jackafuss]

Wow! How insightful can you be? Surprise, surprise, people have a touch of neo-phobia. I understand your problem; "news sellers" must sell bad "news" because good "news" doesn't sell.

[tuneslover]

ohhh......please change it man...it's really ugly...i want old "News Feed", "Live Feed", "Status Update".... :( :( i'm really hating this new layout :(

[PhaseDMA]

Didn't this happen the last time Facebook did a redesign?

So as best I can tell everyone doesn't want the old design back. They want the old design back that they didn't want when it was new.

And when Facebook later comes out with another redesign in 6-8 months everyone will again want the "old" design which will in fact be this "new" design their all currently protesting.

[Inconnux]

Then Facebook should give you the option on how your page is layed out.

[Acetertrix]

Hey Everyone the March 27, Deadline is approaching and I've added a group to FB as well. http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=70267188512 Something you do need to remember about FB, they don't cre what we think, and don't believe people will drop the FB service. But here are some things to remember, the advertising companies that make facebook rich assume that FB really has 175 million users. But they don't they have 175 Million accounts.

I searched for Mark Zukerberg and got over 1000 matches name and photo. Based on this math for every 1 actual person there could be up to 999 or more fake accounts. Bringing FB customer base to 175,000 actual. This is one consideration i know the advert companies havent considered. With that said if you don't like the abuse here join the group and hit em where it hurst the pocket book. If people drop the service ad companies will drop out and FB will have 1 of 2 options Close, or bend. At this point Im good either way.

[Acetertrix]

Hey Everyone the March 27, Deadline is approaching and I've added a group to FB as well. http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=70267188512 Something you do need to remember about FB, they don't cre what we think, and don't believe people will drop the FB service. But here are some things to remember, the advertising companies that make facebook rich assume that FB really has 175 million users. But they don't they have 175 Million accounts.

I searched for Mark Zukerberg and got over 1000 matches name and photo. Based on this math for every 1 actual person there could be up to 999 or more fake accounts. Bringing FB customer base to 175,000 actual. This is one consideration i know the advert companies havent considered. With that said if you don't like the abuse here join the group and hit em where it hurst the pocket book. If people drop the service ad companies will drop out and FB will have 1 of 2 options Close, or bend. At this point Im good either way.

[Inconnux]

What I did is I took 5 ads and contacted them saying that I wouldn't purchase their products BECAUSE they advertise on facebook. Im sure if others did this facebook would start to listen very quickly.

[trianglefoodie]

PLEASE write about this - a lot of us don't care about the esthetics. It's the damn apps. People's stupid quizzes, favorite books, easter egg gifts, etc. - these notices are the ONLY thing showing up on my feed right now. I feel like I'm being spammed by apps, that's why I hate the new facebook design. I couldn't care less about font size or rounded corners on pictures.

The current design only allows you to hide everything the friend does, you can't just remove these stupid app notices like you could with the old design. Also, because virtually everything we do shows up on home pages I've almost completely stopped posting anything on Facebook because I feel like it'll annoy everyone. This is why the new design sucks. Functionality is now in the toilet.

[jbizz2008]

i love the new design!!! and i think that people need to stop bit**ing about it. you made the choice to join face book.. its not YOUR site its THEIR site. therefore they get to make decisions. if you dont like them dont write about it or make a group A.K.A. WE HATE THE NEW LAYOUT MARK!!!....if u hate it so much to write about it just get the f*** off facebook entirely and let people who like it use it!

[Inconnux]

Thats exactly what I did... I left. Facebook makes its money off ad revenue from users... **** off the users and they will leave.

[QuadFather]

The new layout shuns bloggers by not allowing them to show a full post on their profile page. Facebook never was very blogger-friendly, but they've gone the extra mile with this one.

I couldn't care less about the layout, really. But it's the fact that facebook has removed even more freedom from bloggers that's got me bothered.

[dcase99]

by jbizz2008 March 23, 2009 5:36 AM PDT
i love the new design!!! and i think that people need to stop bit**ing about it. you made the choice to join face book.. its not YOUR site its THEIR site. therefore they get to make decisions. if you dont like them dont write about it or make a group A.K.A. WE HATE THE NEW LAYOUT MARK!!!....if u hate it so much to write about it just get the f*** off facebook entirely and let people who like it use it!
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Consider it done! Can facebook just fail now?

[EDunigan]

I am indifferent to the new Facebook design. As an employee of a SaaS company myself, I understand that one of the major benefits of SaaS solutions is the ability to release updates/changes as they happen.

Facebook released the change, however they could have done a better job with their Customers/Users when releasing the change. I wrote a recent post highlighting four tips companies should follow when making changes to their applications:

http://www.trackvia.com/blog/2009/03/23/facebook-march-madness/

[shen97]

Why doesn't any one refer to the previous facebook redesign... 6 months ago! If facebook is going to redesign itself twice a year it will constantly be annoying its users and eventually drive people away. I don't have a problem with the current design, but if the intentions of Zuckerberg et al is to constantly chase the dragon of design then I could see myself deleting my account which is really the only thing that users could do to get the attention of facebook. Voting on surveys in huge numbers against the redesign tells the Facebook honchos one thing, you are annoyed but they can and will continue to see your surfing habits to advertising.

[Bigtime93]

The new design is awful. Its Twitter, but not done as well. I dont know. If this guy has some secret to making billions of dollars using this new annoying layout good for him. I just dont see why he couldnt make billions of dollars with the old layout considering it got him 175 million members.

Honestly, I loved Facebook. But The more Top 5 lists, Marshmallow Peep gifts, and "How South Jersey are you?" quizzes I see on my homepage, the less time Im gonna be spending on there. It catered to the ADD generation just like Myspace did before it. And all that useless garbage is going to drive people away in droves. 30 and 40 somethings dont have the patience to "get used to it" that teenagers do. If we like something we use it, if we dont we move on. Its just sad to see something that was so fun dissapear for what equates to really no good reason.

Way to **** up a good thing.

[kyle4beantown]

Although there has been tons of grumbling from users about the new design Facebook is using, corporations are certainly opening up to it - with one caveat: there needs to be an easier way to find company pages. One way Facebook is making that easy for big partners, is by giving them their Facebook ?home page? with a simple ?slash.? Check out www.facebook.com/Microsoft or www.facebook.com/jeep. These easily identifiable and search-able pages will be in high demand as more marketers move to the ?new? Facebook.

[danielwill]

One of the big stupid mistakes companies often make is to try to cater to people who DON'T use their products instead of those who DO. Facebook has 175 million users. Twitter has 6 million. So instead of catering to their 175 million, they are trying to woo 6 million--at the expense of their current users. This is obviously such bad math--and such bad business, that it makes no sense.

Facebook needs to give MEMBERS the ability to FILTER the WAY THEY WANT. If they want a Twitter experience, fine. But MOST of them will want the LEGACY view which was not only fine, it was vastly preferable to the current way that was created by some Twit.

[danielwill]

One of the big stupid mistakes companies often make is to try to cater to people who DON'T use their products instead of those who DO. Facebook has 175 million users. Twitter has 6 million. So instead of catering to their 175 million, they are trying to woo 6 million--at the expense of their current users. This is obviously such bad math--and such bad business, that it makes no sense.

Facebook needs to give MEMBERS the ability to FILTER the WAY THEY WANT. If they want a Twitter experience, fine. But MOST of them will want the LEGACY view which was not only fine, it was vastly preferable to the current way that was created by some Twit.

[BriarLapin]

I joined Facebook because I had a vague interest in what happen to people I knew decades ago. The old design was nice. I could check in now and again and see what they had been up to. Now with the "redesign" every little whim and fart of thought they had in their vapid little heads was splayed across my homepage like a two dollar *****. The content used to have relevance. They took that away and gave me drivel. They took away my interest, and as a consequence they have lost my eyeballs.

[elo888]

I like the fact that the new design makes it easier not to miss updates from people I'm closest to. But I think the majority of users weren't using lists....If I hadn't already been using lists, the new facebook would have just shown up as a total mish-mash..List-wise: you need to be able to add certain people to lists when you're looking at an update from them or on their profile page. Right now, you have to go in to friends and then do it...and there's no way to just look at all of your friends and drag them into the appropriate categories, which seems like it would be an easy set-up--and something intuitive from Windows (Mac, whatever--both) experience for at least the majority of users.

The way the news itself is being displayed though, with the arrows, is confusing to me..maybe a question of getting used to it..and I think I've just figured out that I won't see photos from people in whatever list I'm in...I have to actually go to the "Photos" list...ugh..of course I want to look at them by friend group..maybe i'm confused on that point, though....

It's true that facebook users, as non-paying customers, aren't in a position to be making demands and that we'll invariably get our feathers ruffled over anything new, just because of the learning curve....but even IF you think that facebook is making the right decision in ignoring the complaints of those who are upset, I think they're still putting the wrong face on that decision. There's no self-serving reason for them to go out of their way to say that they don't care whether users like it or not...

Dr. Tantillo, who has a <a href="http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv" target="_blank"> marketing blog</a>, pointed out that Facebook could have at least done test runs of the product to get feedback..or take the advantage of free and voluntary labor by allowing users to contribute under a wiki sort of setup. Here's a <a href="http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/03/22/brand-winners-and-losers-obama-and-facebook.aspx" target="_blank">link to his full post.</a>