The New Facebook Feed & Design: I Love It!

And as I look on my Facebook feed, I see a flood of comments from the clique I have created over my years on Facebook ( fifth anniversary is coming up in September; what should I buy Zuckerberg?). The Facebook feed is very different today, and I would like to explain why.

The Facebook Feed, which is the home page of all users when they log into Facebook, was ( before the redesign) usually a random collection of “actions” by friends over the course of a day. It would show about 20 friends’ actions ( such as attending events, posting music, writing on friends’ wall etc. ), and it would give the option of showing a “live feed”, which would show all the actions of your friends live ( an equivalent to the blog feed on Wefeelfine.org ).

The “new” Facebook, as everyone is calling, changes this system by automatically giving you the recent actions of all your friends. It is different from the former live feed since it only placces all the actions that have happened ( where the live feed would post an action on the screen while you are looking at it ). So pretty much, whenever your friend does something on Facebook ( that would be essentially public, such as speaking to another friend etc. ), it will be post to the feed.

As well, the Facebook walls of users ( where people can post messages and media onto it; essentially your profile ) has changed, and the design looks bigger and neater.

The Angry Mob Arrives, Pitchforks and Torches In Hand

Many people are outraged over the change, and I for one have something to say on the matter: WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH PEOPLE BITCHING ABOUT FACEBOOK?!?

I love the change that they have done. It isn’t really anything special ( I am ambivalent about the features, but sometimes it is cool to see a friend’s message about a sports game or a funny YouTube video ), except that they aggregate a live feed of your friends. They also make it that they can consolidate your stream based on your friends’ area.

The woe-is-me response to the Facebook change is nothing short of drama-queen whining. Some messages about the new Facebook on an anti- New Facebook group:

“NO SHIT!!! This changing shit needs to stop. It’s stupid. WHY!?”

“I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK ITS GAY”

“I feel like a stalker with new facebook“

Huffin’ & Puffin’ against Facebook at Arianna’s

1. Facebook vs. Twitter for Popularity/ Traffic Argument Viability: Lol

Facebook’s demographic began with the college domain, and over time extended under ( to high-schoolers and tweeners ) and over ( to college grads, Facebook veterans, older people, family affiliates. ) and has a popularity that would destroy Twitter. Twitter has a huge professional following, and its utility has been more of a very useful mailing lists of important people and cliques of friends. This feature, by no means, has anything close to matching what Facebook can offer its users.

What is funnier, is that Facebook has a very popular Twitter plugin that already has 200,000 users. Not only does Facebook trounce Twitter, but nearly 20% of Twitter’s users utilize the Twitter within Facebook.

2. Multiple Uses vs. Single Use Function: Google’ Schmidt Lays Down Hammer

Here is Google CEO’ Eric Schmidt’s thoughts on Twitter:

“Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems.”

“In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?”

Facebook doesn’t necessarily have all the tools of a full-fledged email system as well. But its function not only surpasses what Twitter does, but Facebook has its own update feed, which they can separate into its own feed at any time they choose. If they were ever to do that, there would never then need be a need for Twitter ( although, the adding friend and privacy content functions would have to be tweaked ).

Stopping Twitter Digression Here

Chris Willman does write about some concerns of functions that no longer exists ( such as the real-time live feed ) and some bad quirks ( images are placed on feeds individually so there were many pictures clogging up the screen, but most of the user gripes were based on issues that could not be helped anyway.

He talks of one example of someone who has to be more disciplined on writing on someone’s wall because it automatically gets placed in the feed. This type of statement only casts a spotlight on the stupidity of some users because if you write something on someone’s wall, and someone can see it publicly, then your friends have the means to look at the wall postings. It is the equivalent of stripping in front of a hotel window, and getting angry because you were videotaped with a hi-definition camera and not a cellular phone. Here is the quote:

“Previously, you had to go to a person’s page to see something else someone posted on their wall, building in a level of semi-privacy. Now it’s all part of the same grabbag feed. I am now disinclined to post any status updates or write on anyone’s wall.”

What is more illogical about the this statement is that anyone at anytime could access information from someone’s wall if their information was public or they were friends with the person searching for the information. The fact that stories of people’s Facbook thoughts were being posted publicly way before the change should be enough evidence that the feed isn’t hurting anyone’s privacy any more relative to how people have originally “stalked” people’s profiles.

If you are writing something on someone’s wall that you don’t want someone else to see, you should be disciplined not to put your information in a public domain ( or in this instance, a domain where a “friend” has the ability to access it ). If this information is sensitive or harmful, you should be wary of writing this type of content on Facebook regardless of how the company designs the website. In fact, you should watch what you say whenever you deliver a message, whether it be on any website or even in real-life interactions.

Overall, this rowdy pitchfork-and-torch mob is just a butterskin reaction to a positive reconstruction of a popular website trying to make the content better. Yes, it is a little tougher to get around. And yes, some functions can’t be found. But these tweaks will be fixed in the coming months, and everything will be back to the “new” normal.

The Facebook change: I love it. For all of you that don’t, there are other alternatives that you can use. Oh, there aren’t any as good as Facebook? Yea, I thought so.

ps: Definition of butterskin: Something that is shallow or isn’t concrete, usually to describe an argument, opinion, ideology, stance, or thought.