Zuckerberg addresses Facebook redesign complaints
By Dave Parrack
The redesign of Facebook has prompted an unprecedented level of criticism and headlines around the Internet. The controversy is so great that it has prompted CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to address the issues in only his sixth ever blog post.
What is Facebook? A free social network that allows us all to keep in touch with our friends, family, and complete strangers, update them all with the minutiae of our lives, and play stupid little games such as Wordscraper (nee Scrabulous). With that in mind, should it really be such big news that Facebook has changed its design a little bit?
The simple answer is no, but the redesign, first sighted in July, and since rolled out across the whole network, has caused absolute uproar amongst the 100 million or so users Facebook currently has.
Okay, some of the changes are a bit strange and wholly unnecessary, but even the most retarded ones haven’t actually affected my daily use of the social network. But, this didn’t stop over one million Facebook users joining Scott Sanders Facebook group calling for the old design to remain usable for the foreseeable future.
Last week saw the group informed that the changes were permanent and that nothing could be done about them. And now the roll-out seems to be complete, with all 100 million Facebook users either having to put up with it or leave the network altogether for pastures new.
In an effort to placate the great unwashed who use his network, Facebook CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has explained the design changes in a blog post on the official Facebook blog. He said:
We realize that change can be difficult though. Many people disliked News Feed at first because it changed their home page and how they shared information. Now it’s one of the most important parts of Facebook. We think the new design can have the same effect.
It’s tempting to say that we should just support both designs, but this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Supporting two versions is a huge amount of work for our small team, and it would mean that going forward we would have to build everything twice.
That said, Facebook is a work in progress. We constantly try to improve things and we understand that our work isn’t perfect. We appreciate the thousands of you who have written in to give us feedback. Even if you’re joining a group to express things you don’t like about the new design, you’re giving us important feedback and you’re sharing your voice, which is what Facebook is all about.
So, basically, it’s a thank you for your feedback, but now it’s time to like it or lump it. To be fair to Zuckerberg and Facebook in general, I personally can’t see the problem with the new design, and can understand the reasons behind the changes made.
However, most of my Facebook-using friends disagree with me and have expressed their hatred for the new design. They would love the old style Facebook to come back, but have now got to accept that it’s never going to happen. None of them have left Facebook over the issue so far, But I suspect some will in time.
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January 19th, 2009
I’m experiencing a big problem. every time I want to sent a note, a word to a friend on facebook, there come a message that blocks it, saying since last night, that I’ve been using it too much.!!! For what is it supposed to be used, if not to inter act with friends???
March 22nd, 2009
I think Facebook has been getting an easier time of this than they arguably should from the press because so many people in the press use and like Twitter, whereas many Facebook users *are* Facebook users because they don’t like / have no interest in the Twitter concept.
Obviously, if Facebook has 100 times as many users as Twitter then the maximum possible overlap between the two services is 1% of the Facebook user base. But I would guess that 1% includes virtually all technology reporters.