Webware

FriendFeed's new look, which was launched as an optional feature for brave beta testers, is now the default for all. The company flipped the switch on it this afternoon, and like previous redesigns there's no way to revert back to the old version. Going to beta.friendfeed.com simply brings users to the normal site.

Along with the new look, the company has updated its post-by-e-mail tools. Previously users had a special e-mail address they could send items to that went directly to their home feed. Users can still use that one, but there's now a central address that anyone can send to (share@friendfeed.com) which figures out your account by the address you're sending it from, then sends it to the right feed. It also lets users send direct messages to one another with a username@friendfeed.com e-mail address.

For users who miss the old design, there's a GreaseMonkey script called Cleaner FriendFeed that nixes the new gray background and makes some slight font and size tweaks to make it look as similar as possible.

The updated e-mail sharing system forgoes special e-mail addresses for a universal address anyone can send to--including direct messages to other users

(Credit: FriendFeed)

From what it looks like, the fresh, real-time streaming redesign of social aggregator FriendFeed is getting some accolades from already-avid users--but might not sway the masses.

Among existing FriendFeed loyalists, it doesn't look like there's much dissent about the redesign, which is currently available as a beta test. An "anti-FriendFeed beta version" group hasn't gotten much traction. But on Twitter, which some people see as a FriendFeed complement and others as a competitor, opinions were much more mixed.

"I have (Twitter client) TweetDeck to filter and organize noise. Why then would I still need FriendFeed?" inquired user @rbazinet.

"I'm not a fan of real-time scrolling sites like the new FriendFeed. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of history, but I find it distracting," said another user, @griner.

On the wrong side of history, quite possibly. Real-time streaming is the hot ticket in social networking these days, with "the stream" at the center of Facebook's controversial redesign.

And indeed, Facebook was first to the game. "Even after the redesign, I just don't find FriendFeed compelling. All of my 'friends' are on Facebook," said Twitter user @mikeee. Ever since it started introducing third-party information into its News Feed, Facebook has indeed been encroaching upon FriendFeed territory.

Twitter itself, meanwhile, doesn't live-stream your friends on its homepage, and third-party clients like Twhirl and Twitterrific tend to load incoming messages in groups rather than in real time because of Twitter's limits on how many times a third-party app can call up its servers. But if you run a query through Twitter Search, it'll keep hunting for the keywords and will alert you when new results have come in.

FriendFeed's redesign did get plenty of thumbs up. "Interesting to see FriendFeed focus on performance and UI (user interface) simplicity. They 'get it,'" said Twitter user @jimsimmons.

One thing we've seen with major social-networking overhauls--e.g. Facebook's last few redesigns--is that a swift backlash will often be met with eventual reception, whereas initial quiet can be deceptive if members start to gradually come across usability issues. This is still an optional beta, and often the particularly vociferous criticism doesn't come until after a new feature or design's public rollout.

From what it looks like so far, the reception to FriendFeed's redesign has been neither stellar nor terrible so far. But FriendFeed is a niche service right now; what it really needs to do is break out of Silicon Valley and start gaining quasi-mainstream appeal the way Twitter has. It's not clear that this redesign will be enough to accomplish that.

FriendFeed is releasing a newly redesigned version of its service today (its second major one since launching), and the emphasis is all about viewing both freshly posted items and user discussions as they happen. The service has had a real-time view since October of last year, but this update goes deeper than that, adding it to nearly every facet of the site.

The new look can be accessed at beta.friendfeed.com.

If you've got real-time turned on, any item you're viewing with will refresh with new content as other users interact with it. This includes both likes and comments, which turns it into more of a live chat room than a forum (see also: Tangler). This can be turned off too, which reverts the site to refreshing only when you do so in your browser.

Besides the design change, the service's site-wide search has been given a much-needed overhaul. It's now easier to get at content that flows by at--what is now, a quicker pace. Instead of having to first start a search, then wait until it's done to begin filtering the results, it will pull up suggestions of what kind of content you want to get at as you're typing. For instance, in a search for "teletubbies" it now asks whether you want to be searching for content from just your friends or everyone before it does the query.

FriendFeed's new look isn't just a fresh coat of paint. The new search tool is faster and easier to use.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The redesign has also brought in a new way to sort through the content you find in searches or items you've interacted with, which have been designated as "filters." If you had wanted to save that search for teletubbies for later use, or simply create a feed that monitors the entirety of FriendFeed for when the word comes up, you can save that search as a filter. These go in your filter list, where FriendFeed also classifies things like the "Best of Day" and a feed of any post you've liked or commented on.

Another big shift is that the UI has been pulled back and compacted. Things like rooms or people you've subscribed to are now bunched together into one unit, where previously they were separated. You can also hop straight to a specific friend just by typing the first few letters of their name in the search box, which will provide suggestions as you type.

What may be slightly controversial is that the company has, again, moved all the navigation back over to the right side--a place where it was during the beta stage of the last redesign. Users made enough of a stink to get it moved back. FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor told me that one of the things that they learned from the last time around, and what's different this time, is that the UI now scales to fit your screen, where previously there would be a giant white space between the navigation and new content. The new one simply centers itself, no matter how big of a screen you're working on.

You can now send other users direct messages. Only you and the people you're sending them to can see them.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

One small but nice new feature is the option to send one or more users a direct message. You can create the same kind of post you would when posting to a main feed, or a room, but you're able to limit who can see and comment on it. Taylor says this was in part to let people send things to one another privately without having to create or monitor a private room, as whenever you get a direct message it shows up in your filters with an unread message count, just like you'd get in a Web e-mail client. You can even use this to send things to people from outside of FriendFeed (via a cc to Twitter), and any replies get sent back to your FriendFeed in box.

So will users like this new look? I'm on the fence about it. I liked all the buttons and dials, which FriendFeed still has, but they're now tucked away, and trying to find them is going to take some learning. I'm also not a big fan of the real-time stream, which prior to having it site-wide I used rarely and found to be a bit of a distraction when something I was giving a quick look disappeared farther down the page. Users who are following a lot of friends are going to have some trouble keeping up with it, which is why I'm glad there's still the option to pause it and easily create and save filters.

One thing that's really, really a massive improvement though is the search, which makes cruising through content on the site an absolute breeze. FriendFeed can change colors and button placement all it wants, but if the search tool continues to let people dig through it all in just a few seconds, it becomes less than just a social network, and more of a really fun and engaging social search engine.

It wouldn't be at all surprising if Facebook's response to the bad vibes elicited its latest redesign were straight out of the 1970 comic war movie "Kelly's Heroes." To wit, we give you just one of the refrains from Donald Sutherland's tanker/proto-hippie character, Oddball:

How happy can CEO Mark Zuckerberg be with the griping by users over the latest Facebook redesign?

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves...Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

Hopeful, positive comments from Facebook users have been awfully hard to come by in recent days since the powerhouse social-networking site pushed out a redesign that seems inspired, at least in part, by the up-and-coming Twitter service. To pick just one newly voiced opinion from the company's "Vote on the new Facebook layout" app, which seems in keeping with consensus among the 624,665 comments there so far: "this one is really confusing... the home page look like every one is kinda takin to you!!!!! the previous one was really nice... would feel better if it was changed to the previous version..."

The negativity has continued into the weekend, fueled in part by a Valleywag item alleging that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent an e-mail to employees suggesting that it's folly for a disruptive company to listen to its customers.

Writes Dare Obasanjo, using the Valleywag post as a starting point:

When your application becomes an integral part of your customers lives and identities, it is almost expected that they protest any major changes to the user experience. The problem is that you may eventually become jaded about negative feedback because you assume that for the most part the protests are simply people's natural resistance to change...

Somewhere along the line, it seems the folks at Facebook didn't internalize this fundamental difference in the social context that differentiates user to user relationships on Twitter versus Facebook. This to me is a big mistake.

But some folks are trying to find a silver lining.

Over at VentureBeat, Eric Eldon and MG Siegler offer an in-depth appraisal of the redesign, and lay out their share of criticism--including paying more attention to how users might might react:

From here, Facebook needs to figure out what might be worth bringing back from the old feed, like items about your friends making new friends, events, profile picture changes, etc.

Perhaps most importantly though, Facebook needs to do a better job easing users into this redesign. If it wants people to do their own filtering using lists, it needs to make sure they know how. That's why above the feed filters, there should be two options: One to show you the news feed after the redesign, and one "legacy feed" below to show you just the core Facebook elements that were previously in the news feed prior to the redesign. In effect, this would be the "training" mechanism described above, and again, is critical before the real flood of information starts coming in through Facebook Connect.

Implementation issues aside, Eldon and Siegler write, "the overall idea behind it is the right one." Beyond that, they say:

Facebook should listen to its users in some regards - but if every company only listened to its users, there would be no innovation. If the changes made are ultimately for the better, as Facebook clearly believes, then it needs to suck it up and get through this growing pain. And so do its users.

High-profile blogger Robert Scoble definitely seems to be in the tough-love camp when it comes to users' gripes:

Anyway, all those who are saying the new design sucks should NOT be listened to. Yeah, I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for saying that. After all, how can a blogger say to not listen to the masses? Easy: I've seen the advice the masses are giving and most of it isn't very good for Facebook's business interests...

Zuckerberg is not listening to you because you don't get how Facebook is going to make billions.

We've reached out to the folks at Facebook for comment on the purported Zuckerberg missive and, just in general, for how they're reacting to users' boos. No response yet, but we'll let you know if we do hear anything back on this first springtime Sunday afternoon.

Update at 1:34 p.m PDT: Several readers have objected that this story makes it seem like everyone hates the Facebook redesign, which wasn't the intent. Facebook has 175 million users, a number that's vastly greater than the 600,000-plus comments on the company's "Vote on the new Facebook layout" application.

One person in the comments section below offers this positive assessment: "I actually find the new design more pleasing. It is more functional and manageable. I can select what I want to view instead of everything as a hodgepodge on one page. all they need now is the ability to make my feeds as rss and watch other walls as rss. It is a more advanced design. Probably best for advanced users."

Still, among those who've voiced their opinion on the redesign, the sentiment has largely been somewhere on the side of disappointment.

So there's a new Facebook app out there, designed to poll users on the social network's latest redesign. The results? Hundreds of thousands have responded. 94 percent give it a thumbs-down. Ouch.

Comments range from "WHY FIX IT, WHEN IT WASN'T BROKE, you will be SORRYYYYYYYYYYY" to "It feels counterintuitive and less technologically advanced than the last layout."

Now, this is clearly not an official vote. Chances are, you're not going to install a third-party polling application with the sole purpose of voicing an opinion on the new Facebook design unless you're really opinionated about it. So the 94 percent might be kind of high.

But still. Facebook is so big now--over 175 million members--that even an interface change may throw many of the less technical users completely off guard. And from what we've heard, non-geeks really do find the new design more difficult to use. The new site, particularly the activity feeds on member profiles, really do look different. The blurring between status messages and wall posts doesn't make much sense in my opinion--though I do like the improved news feed filtering tools.

It's easy to wave this off, because Facebook redesigns have brought up one threatened user revolt after another, and the site has just kept on growing. Members grew used to the new features, and in some cases (like the original launch of the news feed) it's hard to imagine Facebook without them. The only changes Facebook has made in response to user outrage, historically, have been in response to privacy concerns.

But Facebook's not just dealing with the young and tech-savvy anymore. When the people who freak out over a redesigned phone bill or cable channel-changing menu have Facebook profiles, "they'll get used to it" doesn't float as well. So this could really be a problem.

The new layout is a forward-thinking one, inspired by streaming content services like Twitter. Executives from Facebook have said that they see "the stream" as the next evolution of how we interact on the Web.

But even though Twitter's all over daytime talk shows these days, it's still just barely out of the gates as something more than an early-adopter toy. It's a fraction the size of Facebook. And the "Twitter plus media sharing" model doesn't have the best track record, as its most notable example, Pownce, was sold to Six Apart and shut down amid dwindling traffic. It probably would've been smarter for Facebook to ease users into the "stream" with a course of smaller tweaks rather than to require them to plunge in headlong.

Facebook's last redesign was finalized in September. That's only six months ago. If a site is putting out changes every six months that a mainstream audience sees as drastic, they could get fed up with it fast.

At Monday's Le Web 3 conference in Paris, Netvibes announced the launch of its latest version which adds support for Google's OpenSocial and Facebook Connect, alongside several new ways to view widgetized content.

The OpenSocial element may be one of the most interesting aspects, as it's now paired with Netvibe's Universal Widget API, allowing developers to create widgets that can pull information from a user's social network. In the example demoed at the conference, Netvibes showed off a weather widget which displayed the user's weather, along with that of their friends. The user didn't have to set up that friends list; it simply came over with their credentials from other social networks. The same back end could be used to make a couch-surfing widget where you get friends' listings when looking up flights or hotel reservations in a particular city.

For widgets, this kind of openness is a big deal. Typically widgets are a self-serving piece of Web code that provide a limited container of information. With Netvibes' system, this information can become more targeted and personalized even before you go in to make initial changes.

New look

Besides the OpenSocial integration, the biggest change users are likely to notice is the selection of new layouts which allow tall widgets to be displayed lengthwise. Users have several choices in preset layouts, and each widget is set up to span accordingly. This is mostly helpful for media rich widgets, which can now properly display 16:9 widescreen video content without having to scale it down to fit. It's also really great for landscape photos, and long-form written content.

Speaking of which, there are new ways to read blog content from widgets, including a new canvas view which loads up the page right inside of Netvibes without jumping you somewhere else. You're also able to format incoming RSS stories into what looks like a slideshow gallery and a headline ticker which creates a neat, if slightly useless scrolling marquee of incoming stories.

You can read about all the updates over at the Netvibes blog. Also, below is a video of what the theme switching looks like:

A look at the new Dropio home page.

(Credit: Dropio)

Dropio, a file-sharing start-up that lets you easily toss anything from photos to phone calls in a "drop" (kind of like a virtual storage cabinet), has launched a new look.

The redesign makes the site look a little slicker, and certainly accentuates Dropio's "easy to use" mantra. It's also clearly a consumer-oriented product now--in comparison, the old design looks like a back-end content management system. That's good, because the company hopes to appeal to Luddites as well as techies. (For a business model, Dropio offers premium accounts that get rid of the 100MB free account storage limit.)

Feature-wise, it's pretty much the same, but Dropio's team has said that it's "about a thousand times more customizable and useful" thanks to a newly reorganized dashboard. They also say that the speed of the site should also be a notch higher.

Yahoo and Google aren't the only ones whose Web site changes incur the wrath of users who'd rather things stay the way they were.

Microsoft is discontinuing an option to use Hotmail's older "classic" interface, merging it with a newer "full" design into a hybrid the company says is faster to use than both the predecessors. "With our new combined platform, we offer great performance in all markets by putting the best features from both versions in one well-designed platform. Because of these performance improvements it is no longer necessary to offer the classic version," the company said in a statement.

Matt Penttila was among those who was unhappy with the change when he lost his old Hotmail interface earlier this week. (More complaints are lodged at My Digital Life site.)

Hotmail users "can't differentiate between tabs and backgrounds because the background is the same color as the tabs, can't change the size of the columns to the left, can't read anything below 10 folders without scrolling down," Penttila said of the newer design. In addition, "read windows don't allow for scrolling side to side, just up and down, anything with graphics is automatically flagged as safe or unsafe and show gray boxes when the day before they were fine and showed with no problem," he said.

What peeved him most, though, was that he said Microsoft foisted the change on him. "They just did it without any warning or consent," he said.

Microsoft said there was indeed warning. "Hotmail customers were notified of these changes beginning in early September," the company said, before the changes started going live on September 22. "The team sent out e-mails and posted ads in advance, which highlighted the upcoming changes to the Windows Live Hotmail."

Also, Microsoft described the Hotmail overhaul rationale in an October blog post by Dick Craddock, Hotmail's group program manager.

It's hard to change heavily used sites. A 2001 Hotmail revamp triggered complaints, then a 2006 Hotmail redesign caused enough problems that Microsoft reverted to classic mode by default.

Yahoo and Google have struggled with objections to redesigns of the Yahoo front page, the Flickr home page, and the iGoogle customizable start page.

Yahoo has finished a redesign of its Flickr home page that emphasizes the photo-sharing site's social aspects.

The new home page shows off more of a user's own photos and more from the user's contacts, and it surfaces social activity such as comments on the user's photos, replies to comments the user made on others' photos, and new photos posted to the user's Flickr groups. (See a screenshot below.)

The move is part of Yahoo Open Strategy, which aims to expose Yahoo users' social activity across different Yahoo properties, let others build applications on Yahoo properties, and let outside sites use Yahoo data. Next up for Flickr is a redesign of the photo pages that house each image, the company said earlier.

Yahoo offers a screencast describing the new look on its Flickr blog.

The redesigned Flickr shows more photos and, through a 'recent activity' tab, more social interactions. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)