Facebook users will soon notice a new design on their favourite social network, one which has been tested for the last five months, and brings about quite a few changes. However, the preview version has got some talking about how similar the design is to the increasingly important Friendfeed.

Facebook is getting a new design, which was released for public viewing this morning, and is now currently being rolled-out across the network. The changes are many, and varied, and seem to herald in an attempt to make Facebook even more user-friendly than it already was.

The most noticeable, and significant, change seems to be the removal of the left-hand sidebar, with all of the links formerly positioned there now moved over to a wider right-hand sidebar. Status updates, wall posts and news feed updates are now combined in to a single stream.

There is now also a drop down menu for all applications. The most popular list seems to only show Facebook-built applications at the moment, but with frequent use, third-party apps should also join the list. Social ads, those annoying picture ads that appear on every page, seem to have been removed completely, but that may be just a temporary move. Facebook holds its second developer conference on Wednesday, and it’s possible that new advertising opportunities could be announced then.

These are just a few of the most obvious changes, of which you can see in more detail on All Facebook, and Inside Facebook. Meanwhile, the ever controversial Michael Arrington at Techcrunch has called out Facebook for seeming to be copying Friendfeed. For those not yet signed up, Friendfeed is a combination of Facebook’s activity stream, and Twitter’s microblogging platform, which sees users sharing content with their friends, which then in turn, creates even more content for people to share and comment on.

The new Facebook homepage is certainly cleaner, and more simplified than the old one. While Arrington may be right about the Friendfeedization involved, this is surely a good thing, as Friendfeed is a brilliantly conceived website that continues to take users away from the increasingly-sidelined Twitter. Facebook has seen where the web 2.0 trend is heading, and tried to grab a piece of that. Its users, more mainstream, and less likely to be tech-minded than current Friendfeed users, will be the direct beneficiaries.

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Entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 3:39 pm under Internet, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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