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New Facebook Redesign More Than Aesthetic

techcrunch.com — Michael Arrington runs down the new features of Facebook. The "feeds" are meant to change the old “Encyclopedic interface", but do much more as well.

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  • Colbert, on 10/12/2007, -25/+18stalkers are going to wet their pants.
    • heyyojay, on 10/12/2007, -20/+6Only your friends can see your profile...
    • ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7heyyojoy:

      You have the option to set that, but it is not the default.
    • nsummy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+26As my friend put it, it is now a stalkers dream. I have to agree. You have so much information on there that can be easily mined. And for most users anyone at their school can see everything
    • theGrue, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34It just shows you things about your friends... If you felt it necessary to friend 500 people at your school that you've only met at parties once, fix that first, complain about stalkers later.
    • ccourt23, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5I thought the samething
    • civdis24, on 10/12/2007, -5/+63 simple steps to stalk someone on facebook!

      1. Find a target to stalk.
      2. Find them on Facebook.
      3. Add them to friends and hope they accept (chances are they will).

      Now you are free to stalk them to your hearts content! You have full access to everything they did on facebook, any communications they had with others on facebook, any updates they made, anything, and all conveniently located on your own personal feed!
    • ThinkBox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Note to self, do not add civdis24 as a friend...
    • coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It doesn't put anything more than what's already on your frickin profile. I don't see why this is a stalker's dream.

      If you're a stalker, you're going to find the info anyways...BY LOOKING AT THE VICTIM'S PAGE.

      If you're worried about privacy on a social site, you need your head checked out. I don't know why people don't realize that when you post something on your facebook it's available to all of your friends anyways, they just have to do less work when you update now.
    • richjoyce, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@coheedcollapse:

      It shows more information than you could have figured out (easily) previously. For example, when I confirm a friend invitation, it would be rather hard for a stalker in the old system to find out who my 178th friend is, but now it's explicity written out. Same thing goes for event confirmations/rejections, group additions, etc. The information is more accessible, which is what makes it a stalkers dream, not that the information now exists, since it already did, as you pointed out.
    • skaughtm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@richjoyse

      you're right, if my stalker knows who i added as my 178th friend i'm going to get raped for sure.
  • benjaminbr, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Holy crap, I can imagine the dean just dishing out a couple mil to have access to the whole campus feed... scary.
    • ceoandpresident, on 10/12/2007, -5/+61) Stalk "friends" on facebook
      2) ???
      3) Profit!!!
    • e3mw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1+digg for the classic South Park reference

      1. get underpants
      2. ???
      3. Profit!
    • mv10, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I hate it
      Stalking 101
  • stisaac, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19In the last few weeks, facebook has put in a bunch of new features which make their site sooo much better, more intuitive and less time consuming.
  • cakeeating, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Yeah, I say, way to go Facebook. I'm just waiting for some more feed customization (I don't care about all those people who are my "friends," after all, just the hot ones.) and maybe some realtime updating similar to digg spy. That would be a stalker's dream.
  • dmurray14, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11The new facebook sucks. It is so stalker-esque and everyone I've talked to hates it. Bad move. It is a huge ***** of unnecessary information.
    • heyyojay, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9How is it stalker-esque... just don't become friends with stalkers and they can't see your information... duhhh..
    • dmurray14, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17@heyyojay
      I don't give a ***** about every minute detail in everyone's life, and I doubt any of my friends care about mine. It's stupid and invasive to have every action I make on the website publicly posted for everyone to see. Its one thing to have this info available, its another to track it in a list and present it for everyone to see. At the very least, make it optional for the profile owner to specify.
    • Balthasar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I think they simply added too much to the feeds. I was a fan of recently updated profiles and that was fine. I don't really give a crap if some loser from highschool suddenly likes Catcher in the Rye. Oh and I don't want all 150 of my friends seeing what a just typed on someone's wall. If you type something to a facebook whore basically the whole school sees it on their homepage.
  • xmetal2001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I don't like how when I write on a friend's wall or add a new friend, people that I don't neccesarily want to know about that not only know I did it, but can see what I've written.
    • crawf061, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5if they can see it now, then they could have seen it before the changes as well. These changes just make it easier for them see which of your friends' wall you've written on.
    • kevinrosesmom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10There's a big difference between having it available for them to see and it notifying everyone on your friends list that you did so. I'm still trying to make up my mind about the changes.
  • gbkyle, on 10/12/2007, -10/+8Facebook ruined itself when they started with that sucky status crap.
    • civdis24, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13The status update was unnecessary enough. This is just absurd. Ignoring any possibilities of stalking, it is completely unnecessary to see EVERY SINGLE ACTION or CHANGE of EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS. The worst part is showing comments. Leaving a comment to one specific friend should not become public knowledge to all of your other "friends".
    • Frebis, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14Then message them, don't write on their wall, you dumb *****
  • ZepFloyd, on 10/12/2007, -14/+0buried, dupe.
  • anonyjames, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26Facebook is spam free, minimal ads, etc. It is terrible on myspace to have to click on each one of your friends' profiles to see if they updated anything. The new facebook features just aggregate public information. I think that's a good thing. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to filter out some of the less relevant stuff, or only show changes by certain friends, but at least they're getting on it.

    Also, facebook isn't down / slow all the time like myspace is. Have I mentioned I don't like myspace?
    • lucask, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Facebook is however ridiculously slow atm due to all of the people frantically deleting all of their friend details with whom they have hooked up with and switching their friend settings in order to keep those regrettable Friday nights away from the front pages of their significant others.
  • Daiken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26I just want to be able to turn the feature off.
    • intoflatlines, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I agree. The feature may be good for some people but I want to be able to turn it off. As of right now, I think the only thing that you can do is ***** around with privacy settings. They should just have a universal setting that will disable all the feeds for you or something.
  • Freps, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I work on a college campus that is utterly addicted to Facebook, and the overwhelming opinion is that it now sucks! I don't want to know all of my friends' business, nor do I want them tracking everything I'm doing. They should have the option to disable participation in the "Feeds" in the privacy section, but alas they do not.
    • splammo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2How do you know the opinion changed this has only been up for a few hours. How do you keep in touch with several thousand people so quickly. Unless... You stalk them via facebook...
    • jcembree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Personally, I like the "facelift" but most people on my campus don't like it either.
  • Sauwan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Damnit, I want an RSS feed with all this crap. I can't be bothered to check the main page!
  • caresieb, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I really LIKE the new facebook, I don't keep the company of creepy stalkers so I have no worries at all about the information. PLUS You can delete a piece of information if you do not wish for it to be on your profile
  • chix0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I liked it better when it was more..hmm...simple?
    They are adding stuff that doesn't really have any use whatsoever. I hate it. Or maybe I just hate the fact that I only have 15 facebook "friends." Yeah loser.
    • MatttK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, the thing I liked about Facebook was that it was simple and clean, while still linking up a ton of information for easy reference and searching.

      They've now taken all that information and dumped every last detail of it in your face, when I really only wanted small bits of that information every so often. It's a mess.
  • danakin, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2http://digg.com/design/Facebook_Gets_a_Facelift

    Already on the front page. Different articles, but essentially same content.
  • Falkon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2One of these days people are gonna realize that these "Social networking" websites are more hassle than help, and the constant security juggling is horrible too.

    Yes, I know you can make your crap private, but tell me, does susie computeretard know how to do that, know it exists, or even care to do that? Almost always no. Yeah I'm generalizing girls especially, but they're the biggest offenders when it comes to "Oh I didn't know!" on computers. Sorry girls. Not trying to be a jerk to the smart ones, just to the airhead ones.

    Stalkerbook. Would be amusing to see.
  • SBee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The new profile layout is so ugly.
  • splammo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think this would work really well if you could turn features that you see and that others see on and off. For example I could turn off broadcasting whos wall I have written on and turn on updates on when my friends add pictures etc.

    People don't like having things forced on them, but I think this could be amazing if you had the option to choose your information.
  • eywillis15, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0awww... poor bob trahan. according to the screen shot at the bottom of the techcrunch article, life has been pretty tough for him recently... my condolences.
  • BlinderBomber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If they offered the ability to customize feeds easily (both what you see and what others allow you to see), I think it's a great new feature... otherwise it is a little creepy.
  • kevinrosesmom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I like the idea in general, but it's just way too overwhemling in it's current form. Do I want to know when one of my friends uploaded a new album? Absolutely. Do I want to know everytime someone writes on someone else's wall? Holy God No. Do I want to know when my friends friend new people? Do I want them to know when I friend new people? Not in the least. Do I want to know when someone's relationship status changes? ... well I might keep that one on.
  • Neme, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I hate these new feeds. Tell Facebook to remove them, guys!
    • stvnly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4facebook is seriously starting to piss me off. I don't need a goddamn newsfeed about my friends, I just want a short profile, a comment wall, and pictures. EVERYTHING ESLE IS ***** ANNOYING
  • TPrime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like the new Facebook features. Like it said in the article, it'll take some getting used to, but in the long run it's an advancement for the site. The past few months I've been wondering what else they could do to Facebook to improve it, and this is definitely an improvement. The only thing I could think to change is to change or be able to remove certain peoples "news" or to change what actions appear on the home page (such as knowing every time Joe Schmoe writes on Stacy Person's wall).
  • Jsmakr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The site is real slow right now.
  • kbaloun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Feed won’t become RSS available anytime soon. The company obviously would like to use this to encourage more frequent user visits, and to redirect those extra visits to other areas of the site, to increase overall stickyness.

    Also the feed as shown on the site is more rich than just a stream of content titles, including “types” and images.

    I'm an early facebook engineer insider.
    My book about Facebook and more on this topic are at www.fbbook.com.

  • jayfarer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1An improvement? Having cluttered, busy icons on the front page is an improvement?

    I dont' want an RSS feed on when my casual acquaintances break up. That's just creepy. And you think that we should remedy this problem by only having friends we trust on facebook? Then what's the point of social networking sites? People like me, we use this as a tool to get to know people better, i.e. people we've only met a couple of times. It opens up the lines of communication, but this does it far too much.

    Yeah, all of this information is readily available, but so are satellite pictures of your house. Imagine if they made a tool where all you had to do was type in someone's name to bring that up.

    Really really bad idea that has an overwhelmingly negative response, and all facebook is doing is deleting any dissenting messages on their blog or their developers forum.
  • dragazis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't necessarily think the idea(s) behind these new features are bad, I just think they are poorly designed and implemented.
  • kbaloun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Some people are complaining about a "lack of privacy", and what happens if friends can see too many of your changes. Remember, this lack of privacy was always there - perhaps only motivated friends saw this stuff before, but now every has a chance to glance at it to evaluate if it is interesting. And you don't know that people more motivated to look at your profile and the people you'd like to be getting to know you better. Especially if you are a hot babe.

    Also some complain about the trivia and excessive detail this shows. People will learn to make fewer trivial, lame changes, which will be good for everyone. And Facebook is certainly already well along with figuring out what items to sort to the top. The point here is to show that the data is there!
    • jayfarer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The fact that it took motivation and dedication to keep up with a person was a GOOD thing. It was an obstacle that discouraged the average person.

      As for the excess details, we shouldn't have to learn how to make less changes. If people want to make trivial changes, and that's how they use the site, then they should be able to. Not be trained to not update their profile.

  • ajc30, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Tips:

    If you don't want something from your profile to appear on feeds go to your own mini-feed and hit the x next to it. if you don't want mini feeds appearing click the triangle next to mini-feed.
  • rc_collins, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1facebook is stupid. I cant join cause I am not in school.

    --dan
    • harrisonpowers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yea iz dum.

      This redesign is so *****, I'm just deleting all my actions from the history list. Take that stalkers!!
    • cessax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2you can join when you enter school dummy. schools pay facebook to setup their own school network (advantage of this business strat: not so much privacy since schools pay to have service, they can use anything against you on facebook if deemed inappropriate...i'm sure you've seen many articles in past about this).
    • ebs16, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@cessax

      School's don't pay Facebook to set up their own sites; in fact, universities have absolutely nothing to do with Facebook. Facebook runs on advertising and venture capital.
  • bowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Here's my idea. Take away all the minifeed stuff on the profile except the categories you may want to share with your school. Secondly, change it so that by default there are no friends in your news feed and then you can add people from your friends list by clicking a button "Add feed", This way you only see what you want to see. If you wanted to take it further, make it so that your friends have to approve the addition of a feed.
    • aliceinreality, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this is a really good solution to the enormous, ridiculous annoyance that IS newsfeed. i like the idea, but it makes me feel obsessive to see EVERY SINGLE THING someone does. i mean, why would anyone want to do that that WASN'T a stalker?

      but maybe choosing your feed items and the people you receive feeds from would be okay.
  • brimg87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm sure over time, people will stop caring and will still use facebook. People will just adapt.
  • SLIPSTR3AM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I came here to see if this issue had hit the front page of DIGG, and I was right. I was originally alerted to this by someone in my friends sent me an invite to a group boycotting the news feed. Then I come to find there are literally dozens of these groups that have formed in mere hours, including thousands of members. Civil war has broken out on Facebook. It's awesome to see people in numbers making an impact for something they believe in [or don't believe in]. By the way, I think it's pretty disturbing and did not activate on my own alumni account. If I want info on someone, I can check myself, not every single move a pseudo-acquaintence makes.
  • cessax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i hate this new "news feed" feature...i REALLY don't want to know what the hell everyone is doing on facebook at every given moment. its really annoying and there is no setting to turn it off. if someone knows how to turnout this news feed bs, please let me know, thanks.

    ps - i'm just reading comments about boycotting the feature...thank heavens.
  • bikeidaho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's called "Facestalking".
  • lightn899, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It looks like you can hide feeds that you don't want other people to see. When logged in on your profile page you can click the X to hide them. This makes me feel better, I could care less about seeing everyone else's comments, but if I make a sarcastic comment that makes me sound like a jerk-off I'd rather not everyone see it.
  • mackoid101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quit whining and take action!


    http://ku.facebook.com/help.php?tab=suggest
  • jphaas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The new facebook is in serious need of three things:
    1. The ability to control what news appears on your homepage
    2. The ability to control which friends can see your news
    3. A less-ugly layout
    That'll take care of the information-overload and stalking-too-easy complaints.

    With those fixed, it's actually a really interesting feature. It nicely supplants certain blogs--I'm thinking the 'today I went to the doctor's then I broke up with my boyfriend lol" variety--making it really easy to keep tabs on the few close friends whose lives you really ARE interested in. I think it's an improvement.

    If you're a facebook member and want to join the fun:
    http://harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208093952
  • rluecke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here are some graphs of people joining during the day and other useful info:

    http://www.flightpad.net/facebook.htm

    Enjoy.
  • grepsy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't know what everyone is complaining about. This is the same data just presented in an easy to access format. I agree that it should be an optional feature, but I think it is a interesting direction to take. The Internet is all about the freedom of information, and if all the information on the sight is available anyway putting it in an easy to see place is not a bad thing. I personally like to be able to tell what my friends changed on their profile and not guess if they change this or that. And I'm not a faceBook stalker and I find it useful
  • techaddress, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mark Zuckerberg: Founder of Facebook Responds, please read details here: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/mark-zuckerberg-founder-of-facebook-responds/
  • techaddress, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Facebook UK Alternative: Univillage Limited. Check it out!

    http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/07/facebook-alternative-for-uk-student-univillage-limited/
  • candeelee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My main problem with the feed is this:
    I am a member of two seperate networks, one is a school network, and the other is where I work. If I go to my friend's page and post on their wall, "Hey, so-and-so's 21st is on Friday, are you going to the party?" I don't particularly want my supervisor to see the information when she logs on. She is not friends with that person, and would have had no way to read that in previous versions of facebook. So what if my friend's 200 friends see it? I don't care about them...its the people that I have to work with on a daily basis that I'm worried about. There are some things I will say and do in front of my friends, that I would never say in front of my co-workers.
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