New Facebook Design Making People Mad

The famous social networking site, Facebook, has recently made changes in their design interface prompting it to be better than before. However, 100 million Facebook users were not happy with the changes.

 An article entitled 'Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming' which was featured in Australian IT on the 11th of September 2008 reported that recent changes done on Facebook has received a negative backlash from the Facebook community. Vice President of Marketing, Chamath Palihapitiya stresses on the benefits of the new design and how it was done in change of the current phenomenon of video-sharing, pictures and musings. Mark Slee, Facebook engineer is confident that Facebook users will find the changes a lot more useful once they are use to it (AFP, 2008).

Old Facebook

(Image Source: Google Images)

New Facebook

(Image Source: Google Images)

What constitutes as a good online design interface? According to William (2009), the reason why Facebook is appealing to the masses is because of it's simple and consistent design interface. Thus, creating a sense of modernity and simplicity which is easy for the users to get use to. People are use to consistency, that is why the recent facebook were only appealing to about 30 million out of the 300 million Facebook users.

The issue regarding the real time streaming is a major problem as new live feeds are consistently updated, thus, making the page load slower than before. Each time that happens, the screen changes focus and you have to scroll to figure out where you were when your reading got interrupted (Bradley, 2009). This makes it longer for the page to load.

Another issue pertaining the changes is the never ending updates of comments from other people whom are not even apart of your friends' list causing more unnecessary information to be shown on the page. As a former Facebook user myself, I had decided to delete my account as I was not pleased with the changes at all. These issues have to be revised in order to keep the majority of the facebook community content with the site.

Reference List:

1. AFP, 2008, Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming, The Australian Media Supplement, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/facebook-makeover-leaves-some-devotees-fuming/story-e6frgamx-1111117453632>.
   
2. Bradley, T 2009, Facebook Makeover: The Good, The Bad, and The Backlash, Microsoft, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=22409898>.
3. William, R 2009, Good Design Features, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://www.ratz.com/featuresgood.html>.