Even Facebook employees hate the redesign
If you’re not a fan of the new Facebook redesign, you’re not alone. It seems that even Facebook employees are lashing out against the site’s new Twitter-like redesign. So what’s Mark Zuckerburg’s response? He doesn’t care.
According to Facebook employees, Zuckerberg has said in internal employee emails that some of the most successful companies don’t listen to their customers, indicating that even though the masses thoroughly disapprove of the new changes to the site, Facebook has no intention of doing anything about it.
As rude as it may be, Zuckerberg may be right. Facebook is arguably one of the most popular sites on the Web. Chances are good no matter what the site did to overhaul the design, people would still use it. There was a pretty strong backlash to the Facebook redesign the last time the site reorganized, and people still used it, got used to the changes, and now probably use the site more than they ever did. Facebook is in a position where they can essentially do what they want, and the public will follow … like it or not.
The new redesign is meant to in some way compete with Twitter, with the news feed now looking a lot like a Twitter feed. Facebook tried to buy Twitter for $500 million fairly recently and was turned down. The site is definitely more Twitter-like, if the new design does eventually catch on people could start using Facebook over Twitter, or at least in conjunction with Twitter, which could help grow site traffic. Now in order to keep up with your friends you have to log into the site several times a day … that’s got to help increase traffic.
What do you think about the Facebook redesign? If you don’t like the new layout, do you think you will keep using the site if it doesn’t change back?
Related Posts:
March 22nd, 2009
People will get used to it, and before you know it, no one will even remember what the old Facebook looked like.
March 22nd, 2009
I am in the process of collecting up contact info for long-lost friends that I’ve reconnected with through the Facebook, in preparation for vacating the site. As a UI designer, I simply find the new design too offensive to tolerate: too childishly intrusive, to conceptually flat and far less scan-able than before, and in terms of graphic design it generally looks like a dog barfed all over my monitor after eating a box of crayons. In a word: Yuck.
I’ve only been using Facebook for a couple of months and while it’s been a pretty enjoyable experience for the most part, there’s really no urgency here. If Zuckerburg &Co don’t give a damn what users think then for this user at least, the feeling is mutual. I can certainly find other things to do with the time I’ve been spending on it and 175 million is still a pretty small slice of the people in the world. I have little doubt that other such services will follow along soon enough. I can wait for the next big thing.
March 23rd, 2009
My entire home page is clogged with people’s stupid app notices. I hate this. I don’t want to hide these people completely, I just want to delete these notices, and the new design only allows hiding them completely. This HAS to be fixed. This is my major complaint. It’s like an entire page of spam at this point. He has GOT to do something about these app news items. I’ve all but stopped posting things because of this.