New Facebook Redesign is even worse than the last one…

I figured I should mention this outside of Facebook:

Facebook just implemented a redesign that is destined for epic failure (Unless they only really care about teenagers).

1. The “stream” is a terrible idea.
Most people I know check Facebook a couple times a day. They do not monitor it, they do not religiously check to see each and every status update their friends went through — they want to get an idea of what their friends are up to, see new pictures, maybe play games and post things.
The stream is chronological, and if you don’t check it in time, you will miss things. While I would say the previous news feeds system was a bit too quiet, this is just insane! A wall-to-wall conversation between two people I barely know used up the top 10% of my facebook home page!

2. Nobody cares what a person’s friends are doing when it doesn’t involve them.
Apparently, items that show up on your main page will also suw up on your profile page. Meaning that when two “friends” you barely know are having a wall-to-wall conversation, it might show up on YOUR profile.

3. Even more control taken away.
I am not interested in the Easter egg application, and I do not what to see it on my sidebar as a “courtesy.” I do not want to see things on my homepage from applications I do not use, or have not authorized. If I wanted applications, I’d go to the applications page. In fact, you no longer have any direct control over what shows up on the sides of your home screen. All you can do is effect the stream.

4. More flexibility is nice, but they totally failed with the status updates.
“Facebook is not Twitter”
I thought I wanted to be able to have a status that did not begin with my name. Now that I have it, I realize that I was wrong. Facebook is about people, and the status should be about the person posting it.
The biggest problem, however, is the fact that it is not longer truly a status. It’s just a post. A “tweet.” It shows up at the top of your “stream” until somebody else posts stuff and pushed it out. This of course motivates people to update their status more frequently, engouraging more junk.
If I want to post messages, I’ll use twitter. Or join a forum.

Facebook was like a more grown-up, relaxed, structured myspace. Now? Well, it just might be worse than Myspace. And I’n not interested in MySpace. Maybe LinkedIn can take over…

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