Last year, social network Facebook opened itself up to third party applications developers. Due to this move, they have been facing a problem – the user profile page, which used to be neat and clean is now very cluttered, and looks similar to that of their competitor, MySpace.
Facebook has now decided to take matters in hand, and redesign their site to make it look simpler and cleaner, while still giving clients control over their profiles. The new design is due to be launched sometime this month, and as a preview, they have already started releasing some new screenshots. They have also launched two new metrics, on a 7 day and 30 day basis, which will allow them to gauge the effectiveness of the applications on weekly and monthly basis.
These changes will eventually result in a better and faster Facebook.
In effect they will be offering their clients, a variety of tabs, such as Applications, Newsfeed etc. which will allow the client to show only whatever part they wish to, at a given time, instead of showing everything at once, and thus cluttering up the page.
They hope that being able to reduce the clutter from their site, will help them to entice more users, or at the very least, please their existing customers and keep them on the site for longer periods of time.
However they will have to keep in mind the fact, that as long as they continue to allow third party apps developers, their page will continue to keep getting flooded with new stuff, at least some of which, will be nonsensical and spammy. At the same time it is imperative for them, to relay some ads to their customers, from time to time, in order to remain commercially viable.
Customers have been requested to send their feedback to profilespreview@facebook.com. Facebook will evaluate these suggestions and incorporate them if possible in their new design.
http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPreviews
