Once again, Facebook has redesigned their homepage and though there are no major changes this time, users have protested against the changes in large numbers.
As with previous occasions, when the homepage was redesigned, this time too several groups of users have formed to object to the recent changes. One group called ‘PLEASE GIVE US OUR OLD NEWS FEED BACK!’ is over 500,000 members strong.
Some of the complaints these users have raised are as follows:
- The Live Feed is not “live” enough
- Alerts are not shown when new content is posted
- While the alerts are actually being posted on the News Feed, they are not very prominent
- The news feed is not very good as some of the stories are almost one day old
- This time, Facebook did not give them enough notice about the impending changes and suddenly incorporated them in the homepage.
To be fair, Facebook has made these changes only to correct some errors in their previous design, like adding information about friends of friends, and placing the events and birthdays column above the fold.
Facebook has also improved some of their features like the ‘Share’ button. Facebook will now be able to provide detailed analytics to their publishers, so they can find out how popular a particular link is, and how many actions have taken place on Facebook, how many comments have been received etc. This feature is quite similar to the retweet counters that work with Twitter.
They have also updated their APIs to allow for the building of new apps.
In spite of the large number of protests, the allegations are not really serious and Facebook is sure to be able to survive and continue growing.
