Friday, September 19, 2008

New Facebook Can Suck It

If you've read my blog for long then you know I'm not opposed to change (I think I've changed the layout here 3 times in the last 2 months). So when Facebook announced they were going to be making some changes to their layout, I didn't think much of it.

Until they changed it.

What was once laid out in a simple, linear fashion is now a jumble of stuff just kind of thrown onto the page, much like what MySpace did a year or so ago (prompting my decision to give up on them). For a while Facebook gave you the option of keeping the old design or trying the new one. I think I knew one person who stuck with the new one. I used to be able to pop in to Facebook, do my thing, and zip out. Not the case anymore. Now I have to pop in, go to this page to do that, this other page to do that, click here and then hover over this to do the other thing....

I understand that in the grand scheme of things Facebook changing their layout is no big thing. There are way worse things to be upset about. But now that Facebook has forced the change on everyone and there is no "old version" to opt for, the more I use it, the more I find things that frustrate me about the new layout.

I don't spend a lot of time on stuff that frustrates me, so I may or may not be hanging out on Facebook as much as usual. My updates may not be as prompt, my time spent there much shorter. I won't be browsing your photos or videos as much as I'd like and your notes may go un-commented on. It's not that I don't care.

It seems a majority of the people I've spoken to feel the same way, and I dare Facebook to man up and admit they are wrong. If Coke can admit their mistake and bring back the original flavor, then so can you, Facebook. New Facebook sucks.

And Tom, from MySpace, before you start celebrating, put away your champagne, sparkly bling banner ads, and annoying promos that blast me with sounds upon login. I'm not going back to MySpace, either. Fool me once, shame on you.

Is Friendster still around?

3 comments:

Brad said...

AMEN!

K-Rax said...

But Facebook isn't listening to the simple suggestions it's customers are giving them in droves and scores. Bring back the applications. Introduce a toggle to the old format which had a small enough memory footprint to do this. Allow the pics format grid to be customizable by the user to 4x5/5x4 and other display arrangements. Allow all the pages to be customizable by the user. This is all simple and doable. There was already the Developer app that allowed the old. Embed that into the code. That worked GREAT! I will sit back for the next week and expect this to get done.

James Zimmerman said...

People like you make my head hurt.

I will simply say this. When there are redesigns, with anything, you have two options. You either suck it up and learn this new way of doing things, or don't use said product and you find a medium that works for you.