Hands-on with the new Facebook home page
The new Facebook design we covered last week began rolling out to users today. And yes, it looks a lot like Twitter. An awful lot like Twitter. The home page displays updates from your friends top center, with a "What's on your mind?" box above the stream. All the photos and apps in Facebook are still there, but the new design really puts the friend stream in your face.
Facebook began rolling out its new Twitter-like home page today.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman / CNET Networks)App-driven updates from your friends also show up in the stream, so it is a very good way to keep up with what's going on in your circle. And thanks to the new prominent filter function, it's easy to see just the updates from people in your networks. This is like the mythical "groups" feature that Twitter users are waiting for. You can easily see just the updates from people at your company or school, or from a particular app, and then pop back to the full feed and see all your friends. I like the ability to hide updates from contacts I'm not especially interested in.
Facebook still isn't a direct Twitter competitor. Its "friending" concept sets it apart. On Twitter, you can follow almost anyone, even if no one is following you. On Facebook, it's more reciprocal: by default, you follow the people who follow you. See Facebook vs. Twitter: How will you stream your world?
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. But overall, this is a strong update for old guys like me who want their Web services simple. It puts your friends more in front of you than the old design did, and that's what Facebook is really about.
If you don't have the new design yet, relax. Facebook said in the announcement today, "Facebook will migrate all users to the new home page slowly, so everyone should have the new home page over the coming days."
Facebook has more on its own blog.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
"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.
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.
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.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=149814785536
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?
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.
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.
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!
- by mattmcb123 March 27, 2009 11:45 AM PDT
- Still, the best homepage around is sthrt.com. If you want a true homepage I would check it out.
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