What’s New Facebook-Doo?

I never got all the hubbub about Facebook. It’s a Social Networking site. You put up embarrassing and/or macho pictures of yourself. Then you comment to all your friends about how awesome you may or may not look, then you gossip. Somehow I wonder how more people don’t get punched in the face because of Facebook. Then it had an update so I started caring, ever so slightly.

Regardless, recently I have been perusing around Facebook and found a grand variety of comments over the supposed ‘New Facebook’. Based on what I have seen, the vast majority of them were negative, ranging from ‘damn this thing sucks’ to ‘F*&K! CHANGE IT BACK!” and I can understand where these people are coming from. People are adverse to change, that’s for sure. So the extreme negative reception is expected. In response to the response, I took a better look around to try and figure out what people are complaining about. I actually discovered that I like most of the changes.

Personally I hardly use Facebook. Facebook is about occasionally posting images, catching up with friends, and obsessively stalking your enemies, two of which I rarely get around to doing. However, contrary to the popular opinion, I actually liked the redesign. While I admit that the Boxes tab is unorganized and hard to use (which may enviably be part of the design idea, trying to make it look like the machinations of an adolescent or collage brain, explaining quite a few things) I enjoyed most of the new changes.

First of all, the Wall was annoying. It was always at the bottom of every page and with the multiple varieties of walls it was just a pain in the ass to deal with. Now that they combined that with the posts section, I really like it. It still has all the basic information along with a brief insight into one’s photos and videos. It has all the simplicity that a profile page should have.

In general, the merger gives the Wall a more complete aesthetic, instead of the large disconnect that it had prior. Also I never thought the wall had much of a purpose, with the prominence of IM and e-mail. Now the Wall has a much greater sense of purpose on top of making it a lot easier to use.
The separations of Info, Photo and Boxes are also an improvement. Previously it cluttered up the page, and with its division profiles appear cleaner and more streamline, along with making the information easier to access.

Unfortunately the Boxes tab is a slight reverse. Again, I rarely use Facebook so I don’t have many applications or the like, but I found that the Boxes actually make life harder. They are pretty far from the main pages, creating a sort of disconnect. Also half the information in that tab is trivial bringing up the point of why would I bother to go through all that simply to view someone’s Scrabulus high score. At least before all one had to do was scroll down.

Overall I liked the change. It’s better for people like me who only really care about seeing what people having been doing recently, and pulls away from the apllication side. This, in a way, is returning Facebook to its roots: a purely social forum with the applications solely as a backdrop. The feed has been divided appropriately and is much more customizable to filter out the updates you don’t care about, or to show everything. Though there are some kinks, I think the change is for the best. It looks to appeal to the more casual users (like myself), while still remaining functional for the coffee-inspired socialites who require an update every fifteen seconds.