RSSFacebook users unite in outrage over changed layout
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 12, 2008, 4:36 PM
Some don't like it when others clean out their houses while they're gone on vacation, and a few might hate it when someone else cleans up. Facebook is now cleaner, brighter, and whiter, and tens of thousands are unhappy.
Nearly 140,000 Facebook accounts have been entered into a group in support of an online petition opposing, for one reason or another, the service's new Web site layout unveiled late last month. And that's just one group; another, entitled "People Against the New Facebook System," has garnered close to 33,000 accounts; and another, "The New Facebook Layout Sucks," gathering nearly 8,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.
Not all accounts represent individuals who are necessarily opposed to Facebook's new look, as evidenced by some message threads in these groups launched by defenders of the layout. And a sizable amount of traffic on these groups actually consists of invitations to join teams in an online game of Mob Wars.
But complaints certainly outnumber supporters there by, pun intended, a wide margin. Many of these complaints register active and sometimes vehement opposition to the abundance of white space; and some have already begun segmenting users into "pro-new-Facebooker" and "anti-new-Facebooker" classes, complete with subclasses and categories.
Amid the spontaneously generated class warfare and pre-scheduled Mafia hits, there have been some intelligent discussions, including reaction from one lady named Laurie who responded to comments saying that the new look simply takes some getting used to.
"The problem with these arguments is that they don't take into consideration the fact that the new system can only be fully understood and appreciated if you've been acquainted with the old system," Laurie wrote. "For brand new Facebook users, such as my parents who just joined, the new system is extremely non user-friendly and downright confusing. For example, my mom was trying to figure out what the difference was between a note and a wall posting. No wonder she couldn't figure it out, because once completing both a wall posting and a note, they both appeared in the same spot - on the mini-feed! For us veteran Facebookers, we understand the difference between the two, only because we know the old system and are familiar with terms like 'wall' and 'note.' I can see why my mom couldn't get the difference - because they both landed in the same location, giving her very little to distinguish the difference."
In defense of white space and applications' rearrangement, one user named Jonathan launched a thread entitled, "Why the New Look is Good!", where he writes, "With the redesign, it also appears as if Facebook has remembered its primary purpose, to be the best social networking site in the world."
"The next major aspect influenced is usability, which has remained constant, throughout the changes. Everything still takes about the same time to accomplish, messages, wall posts, etc. It may take a series of different steps, but the number of steps is relatively the same, perhaps one could argue that its now more intuitive, although it really comes down to taste. Facebook has also gotten rid of the left sidebar and placed on the profile something much more important in that space, you. Our eyes are trained to study left to right, up to down, so now your profile picture is in the upper-left corner, putting the attention on you, not your applications, a really nice touch."
During an earlier redesign effort in September 2006 in which outgoing RSS feeds were added to users' pages, complaints about privacy issues drew more than 700,000 accounts into a Facebook group calling for a privacy re-evaluation. But this latest effort to muster opposition appears centered more on a certain lack of adherence to feng shui. As one member named Scott (no relation) enumerates, among the Top 10 biggest problems with the new layout are the facts that it's messy (#5), incompatible (#2), lacking personality (#7), boring (#9), and too similar to MySpace (#8).
Meanwhile, a Facebook group gathering supporters of aid to Darfur gathered 572 members as of Tuesday afternoon; the Hurricane Katrina Relief Foundation signed up all of 1,377 Facebook members at last check; and a gathering of members aiding victims of the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, counts 387 members.
I like the new layout it is less cluttered and crappy applications are on another tab out of the way. People don't like change, I use facebook to keep in contact with Uni friends when I am back home and relatives on the other side of the world..
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|Lol. This is hilarious. I'm pretty angry myself that their "Edit..." links within their Ad Manager doesn't work anymore so I have no way to cancel my ads!
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|What people don't seem to realise is that "Facebookers" use the site for different things. Some use it as a kind of online address book where their mates are contactable from one place. Others use the applications and games on a regular basis. For the former the new layout is great, as it cuts out all the applications and games boxes when they load a profile page (previously they could simply minimise boxes they didn't require to see, whilst those interested could easily view it all on one page, so that wasn't even a problem in the first place). For the latter the new Facebook layout has completely altered their use of the site. A lot of games and applications are not compatible with the new profile layout and cannot be displayed. A lot of settings have been lost with the changeover, and the display options are not available to reset them on the new style. The process of adding applications now bypasses privacy settings, so a lot of people have not been happy that their actions have been broadcast to Facebook friends without their knowledge or consent. The new layout is regularly referred to as the "Stalker-Profile" because it appears to cater mainly for users who want to track other's moves on Facebook. Finally, the new layout gobbles up the CPU and takes ages to load. The new layout smacks of change for the sake of change. Unhappy user's are not just losers who can't handle change.
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|It should be noted that if you really want the old layout just use IE6, as it doesn't support the new layout and defaults to the old.
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|I like stuff.
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|All those people need to get a friggin' life... Facebook is for social retards who cannot meet people in real life... figures they'd all complain about something so dumb.
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|They didnt force you to use to new layout. I just dont get these people.
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|Waaa.... I cannot handle change.. waaaa. The world is about to end because Facebook's interface changed for the better, but it is not better to me because it is different .. waaa!!!
Must be 10k Republicans complaining then :)
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|"Must be 10k Republicans complaining then :) "
LOL :)
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|What's funny to me is that all you people making fun of the facebook users are the same people that whined about the Betanews layout change...enough so that Betanews actually had to roll back to their old layout.
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|A. I'm a facebook user
B. I'm (obviously) a betanews user.
The new layout of Facebook is better, as it takes into account larger resolutions and make everything "fit" better.
The new Betanews layout sucked and moved everything around. I liked having the news on one side and the betas on the other. Half the people who come here probably don't even read the news articles. I know I didn't when I first started coming.
If change is for the better then I'll support it. If it is counterproductive though I'm against it. I think most would agree with this.
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|Just admit it, you dont know or even have the slightest idea if "all" these people here were the same ones who "whined" back then? Also its not like you are able to predict the future either?
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|"If change is for the better then I'll support it. If it is counterproductive though I'm against it."
I guess you feel that everybody has the same taste as you and if you think one layout is better then another...then so doe the rest of the world?
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|"Also its not like you are able to predict the future either?"
I don't remember claiming to be able to predict the future...and what does that even have to do with the argument anyway?
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|Actually, I can speak to that point a little bit.
I hope no one got the impression that it was users' "whining" that prompted us to go back to our former layout, after our CES 2008 trial in January. The truth is, we really were doing a kind of "beta" of some new ideas, and in the trying of them, we came to the conclusion here that a number of them were unworkable -- and that conclusion happened to agree with what we were told by some of our readers.
Yes, there was some whining, I admit, but there were also some genuinely constructive complaints, and we listened to them and took heed.
-SF3
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|No, but logic should agree with me about what is most efficient and that's all I care about.
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|How dare they!?!?!?
I'm outraged. Can you tell? I mean come on, everyone knows change is bad. Sheesh...
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|God, I wish that many people could unite in a cause for, say, environmentalism, or helping refugees in George.
But no, entitled western nerds need to complain and unite in a fit over facebook changing, twitter not working and Google's services going down.
Typical.
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|agreed, of all the things 140,000 people could do with their energy in this world and they choose a website interface for their calling. Get a life!
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|Yea...and you're that much better...devoting your energy into complaining on a website about other people that are complaining about another website, and you somehow feel superior on top of it.
Typical.
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|All these comments are awesome so far, and I agree with everyone of them.
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|wwwwaaaaahhhhhh a service we use for free changed something waaaaaaahhhhh
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|I swear facebook has to be one of the loudest whiniest communities on the internet.
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|you bet.
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|Its not even that different they just cleaned it up, 33,000 people complaining about a webpage looks, jesus...
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|Geez, it's just a layout. Old users should know their way about and new users just have to get accustomed to it.
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