A design revamp at Facebook leaves some of us at PSFK disappointed. Instead of leading the pack, Facebook seems to have taken a cue from the young contender Twitter and borrowed from their catch-phrase ‘What are you doing?’ The new Facebook asks its users, ‘What’s on your mind?’.
Maybe, Facebook execs have spent the last few months wondering how to kill Twitter and decided that the best way to do so was to mimic the microblogging service.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
This may well slow the flood to Twitter for those who just want to tell people they are “eating an ice cream” but it certainly won’t hinder the growth of tweeting information.
For me facebook is a community of friends sharing experiences; where twitter is a community of experts/specialists sharing information.
I personally don’t like the jumble the homepage has become. It seems to be designed as such to allow sponsored content to mingle in with shared content from friends… a potentially profitable move on the part of facebook and I don’t blame them for change.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:51 am
They’ve got to be going after Twitter, right? Why else go to the live streaming homepage and the new prompt? I never really got into the NewsFeed, and I think the new homepage is designed to bring those in who were/are skeptical of the utility of NewsFeed or Twitter (or alternatively, don’t want to get into Twitter to have another “thing” to keep track of.)
I think the changes to the fan/company pages are much more interesting than those to the homepage. To me, those changes will encourage personal contact with brands/celebrities the way Twitter does.
Piers, that 470 doesn’t drive you nuts everytime you log in?
March 16th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The difference between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter is single-focus (status updates), whereas Facebook is multi-dimensional (status updates, calendar entries, comments on pages, etc.). With the new redesign, almost everything outside of status is hidden from the home view. As a result, I predict that usage of these features will go way down. Because people will only use the features that 1) connect them to other people, and 2) are seen by others. For example, people often see that their friends have added a new friend, and they will add them to – but now you can’t see this on the home screen. Also, why use a group or calendar entry to promote an event, when no one sees it?
By going after Twitter, Facebook seems to have forgotten that their platform is so much more than status updates.
March 16th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I completely agree! The first thing I noticed was how much it looked like Twitter.
First of all, I don’t see any need for Facebook to compete with Twitter – they do completely different things. A lot of people have suggested Facebook status updates were pretty much like Twitter, but they are entirely different. Twitter is about conversations, Facebook status is about sending a message
Secondly, Facebook should not be copying and following – they should stay ahead through innovation and new ideas. Copying Twitter will not change the way I use Facebook, nor the way I use Twitter.
Are they gonna completely redesign their website everytime a new kid on the block shows up? They better bloody don’t!
March 16th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I wondered if I was just being resistant to change when I found myself annoyed by the redesigned Facebook. Now I think I’ve witnessed the first misstep in strategy. Reacting to Twitter is dumb & short-sighted, but perhaps a one-time mistake. I don’t expect them to put it back to the way it was, but I do expect an evolutionary improvement that respects Facebook’s genetic code.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:46 am