The Great Facebook Redesign of 2011
Hot on the heels of the facebook redesigns of 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, which involved a like button being made two pixels wider, the login shifted to the other side, and the main shade of blue shifted up an octave, we have possibly the most radical changes ever seen to the Facebook front end.
Yet again we have the Farmville faithful sharpening their pitchforks and virtual marching into Mark Zuckerburg’s office and telling him straight just what they think about Facebook’s ‘improvements’.
But Tuesday’s tweak which saw a ticker added to the top right and suggested subscriptions below it didn’t even hint at what to come Thursday.
It’s hard to fathom which will confuse the layman more: Facebook’s Timeline or the alleged ability of neutrinos to arrive in front of their own timeline.
Both are causing a monumental stir; and both could be monumentally wrong.
If you haven’t had the chance to check out Facebook’s Timeline, you can see an overview of it here. You can also give it a test run before it goes live next Thursday by following these instructions.
There’s no denying it’s brave. But, it’s also not the average user’s point of interaction. It’s a revamped profile page that assumes to be the one-stop-shop of your entire life. I personally like it in the same way I like jazz: technically impressive, but hard to sing along to.
But layout bitching may not the main bone of contention.
I’m more inclined to fall into line with Slate’s claim that Facebook is killing taste with ‘frictionless sharing’.
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to share. He doesn’t much care if you want to share. Sharing, in Zuckerberg’s view, has morphed from an affirmative act—that video was hilarious, I think I’ll Like it!—to something more like an unconscious state of being. I watched that video, and therefore it will be shared.
Call it noise as a brand strategy.
Genius! Or is it? Feel free vent accordingly.
