I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe FB employs experienced user-interface designers. As a content strategist for an interactive company, I work with several UI people and they're just appalled by the new FB. Good, in-depth user testing would've revealed numerous flaws with the new site, and those flaws could've been dealt with privately BEFORE rolling things out to the public. Why FB didn't do this is just beyond my comprehension.

I agree with previous posters who said the current page views are probably not relevant. I'm spending a lot of time on FB right now myself, but it's primarily just to keep tabs on whether or not changes are being made. Ironically, my largest-growing group of FB friends are people I've met due to the note I wrote about what's now wrong with FB. That can't be the social networking Zuckerberg had in mind.

One of the best and most concise recaps of this debacle came from one of those people: “The old Facebook was a way to interact WITH people, the new one is to hear ABOUT people.” That pretty much sums it up.

It just takes a lot of time to manually export all your contact info, etc, in preparation to leave. Judge this redesign not by user polling, but by how quickly migration tutorials appear and how much traffic they get.

However I don't think Facebook's mass users were going to jump ship to Twitter anyways because it is a completely different animal and the relationships it forges are unlike the ones you have on Facebook. Facebook is still about the people you know but Twitter takes us back to the era of Myspace where everything is open for the world to see.

Only after a while does this transition take on the 'norming' phase and people resign themselves to the fact the change is here to stay. Give people a while and then make a new change and the cycle will repeat itself; the complaints will come flooding in!

Regards,

Karl

This is the best summary I've read so far of the potential UI shock to users. While new users will just accept it as what it is, I'm seeing a lot of feedback within my age bracket (High School Class of 199x) that have been thrown for a loop. This sentiment is accurately captured when someone suggested taking a class reunion project -elsewhere- (*ahem* NING).

What I find odd as an expert user of various web interfaces from simple to elegant is my inability to place what Facebook was thinking when adopting certain treatments. The “Add to list” example highlights this exactly.

Previously, I asserted that any change to any interface on anything is going to be barely noticed by new users added after that change. Each new user will cling to what it perceives to be the interface that was the one they recall. Well, the “Add to list” new users will perceive that Facebook is flat out cumbersome and clunky.

I still hope that Facebook will be expanded to support greater control over the layouts, and perhaps give the users controls over this presentation. Did all the rage over customization, portlets, and panes go away recently? I could have sworn that memo wasn't quite dead yet.

Yes, but let me clarify: I think, if they don't do something to fix the problems they've created, existing users will drop their usage of the site. As I read in another comment on the “Facebook should largely ignore the complaining users” post, I've used the iPhone app a lot more since the change, purely because it seems to make more sense than the new mess of a homepage.

But maybe the number of sessions won't reflect a usage drop quite as severely as it would if the website was the only place of use, and perhaps the level of new users will hide that too.

Yet, I also think it's now complex design could harm its growth. The beauty of Facebook (and much other social media) is – or was – undoubtedly the fact that it had very low barriers to entry and use. You opened an account and didn't need much prompting to use it, or help to navigate around. I wonder if that's still the case.

Ultimately, yes, I do think this redesign will hurt them and their stats unless they can (as you guys say) develop the concept. But they're on tricky ground now, because more and more changes will further annoy people and, more complexity, with a very, very simple (and often desktop-client-based) competitor app like Twitter building up steam (even though it's very different from FB)…. you know there's always someone designing a bigger boat.

FB is now facing the same problem as MSFT: they've got too much legacy (in MSFT's case, too much stuff written for DOS/WinDOS; if FB's case, too many conservative users who will resist any change).