zahnster

An intriguing link popped up on the top of my Facebook page this evening. “The new Facebook is here.”

The ‘new’ Facebook? I wasn’t aware there was anything wrong with the old one. So, I clicked with an anticipated caution, and overall, I’m very pleased with what I’ve found.

Facebook’s always been a special site to me. Ever since my University was ‘allowed’ into the network in early 2005, I’ve been in love with the site - a clean, simple, and effective alternative to MySpace. As it’s grown, I’ve stood by it’s changes as clever and innovative, even when others haven’t (coughminifeedcough). Facebook has never been afraid to take risks, and tonight they are taking a huge one, as the changes to the platform are massive, and a bit genius.

The most obvious change to the site is they took the mini-feed, and they took the wall, and apparently made a baby with them. I call it Wall-eed. I just knew there was something up when they added comments to feed stories, and this explains it. I have to wonder what the main Facebook community is going to think of such a change, seeing as the mini-feed wasn’t very well recepted, and now it’s a main feature of the web application.

While it’s quite a shock to lose the wall as we knew it (I remember back when your wall was nothing more than a giant textarea field), it still does in exist in an alternative viewport. However, this cuts off any resemblance of a mini-feed, and I’d like to think the two can exist in haromy.

There’s a few other new pages to your Facebook profile now. Your basic info’s now thrown into an ‘Info’ page, and I have to say, they did a very nice job with the layouts. Facebook’s always had elegant UI, and they’ve stepped it up, going to a wider, 3 column layout. There are still a few kinks to work out… I’m a huge fan of Pages and Facebook really needs to tighten up the display to show more than 5 items - now there’s the room.

They’ve also put Photos onto it’s own page, which makes sense - Facebook’s mobile upload ability has made it one of the most popular photo-sharing websites on the Internet.

Lastly, it’s interesting that they put all the Facebook apps into a page called ‘Boxes’. How is this not a huge blow to Facebook apps as a whole? I mean, who’s gonna click on Boxes? Personally I’m already sick of the application puke that many of my friends have succumbed to, and I’m glad I’ll never have to see that crap again (if I could only get rid of the invite requests).

All in all, I like the new Facebook. Not love at first sight or anything, but it’s already growing on me.