I'm sure everyone has been using the new Facebook layout for a few days now, and I figured I'd write down some of my thoughts on it.

My first impression is that it isn't that different from the old layout. You still have the main feed down the middle, and all kinds of crap on the sides. Nothing new by any means. What does bother me is that they're trying to decide what is important to me automatically. I hate it when someone tries to tell me what I'm interested in.

The old feed allowed you to view what they determined the top stories or you could view everything chronologically. Call me crazy, but I always viewed the chronological "most recent" feed. I didn't want to miss anything important, and that way my way of doing it. Did I see a bunch of things I didn't care about? Sure. There is an easy fix though, usually those people are spammy and annoying, so you can unfriend them or block their updates. I have a few people that I unfriended, and a few that I blocked updates from.

I think Facebook thought they could appease people like me with the box on the right hand side showing everything that's going on. The problem there is that it shows me what songs people are listening to (don't care), anything anywhere that someone liked (don't care), and nothing is grouped (each comment on an item is a separate item). This is too much information.

That means that people like myself that were filtering the feed ourselves are now stuck with either the automated feed or the raw feed. Neither of those options really appeal to me, but I just have to put up with it.

Do I hate the new layout? No. Is it somewhat annoying? Sure. Will I come up with a new "workflow" for getting information? Absolutely.

That's how the world works. Things change. We adjust. The new becomes the old.

At least this time I didn't get invited to any groups that are "1,000,000 strong to change Facebook back". Of course, those groups only have a few thousand people in them.
Posted
AuthorMichael Cantrell
CategoriesRandom Thoughts