Column: Aversion to Facebook redesign reveals unexpected narrow-mindedness
by Stephen Torrence | Daily Toreador (Texas Tech)
Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: Opinion
(U-WIRE) — This morning I just rejected another invite to join a "4 Gazillion People Who Hate the New Facebook" group. Honestly, I'm starting to get a tad miffed. So I've decided to set the record straight on this little Web 2.0 uprising once and for all.
The new Facebook has been in beta for over a month now, and I'll grant that initially it had some major flaws. In Firefox 3 the pages would sometimes refuse to load entirely, or I would get strange coding errors in the margins. Overall it just lacked polish, and I often ended up reverting to the old interface.
Now the option to go back to the old Facebook is gone, spawning an angry mob wielding virtual pitchforks, seemingly determined to lynch Mark Zuckerberg and his band of cocky coders for their presumptuous upturning of the status quo.
Most of them argue that the option to revert to the old interface should remain, claiming that the new interface is simply too much of a change to get used to.
Recently I've been spending more and more of my time in the new Facebook, and I've become a huge fan. The wider layout makes it much easier for me to see all my content at a glance. I appreciate having my status bar larger at the top. I love the ability to filter the feed into different custom tabs, including one that shows me everything in the raw and updates automatically. Browsing through massive photo albums is a breeze now. And finally, users' profile pages are not cluttered with a plethora of frivolous applications, restoring some of the clean-layout charm that drew me to Facebook in the first place.
Across the site the AJAX coding also feels tighter and more responsive, and the bugs are getting more infrequent all the time.
I find it a profound irony that Facebook users, who seem to support Barack Obama by a fair majority, are so resistant to change. Granted, their insistence on retaining the option to switch between old and new interfaces does resemble Obama's pro-choice stance, so I guess they do retain some measure of consistency.
The new Facebook has been in beta for over a month now, and I'll grant that initially it had some major flaws. In Firefox 3 the pages would sometimes refuse to load entirely, or I would get strange coding errors in the margins. Overall it just lacked polish, and I often ended up reverting to the old interface.
Now the option to go back to the old Facebook is gone, spawning an angry mob wielding virtual pitchforks, seemingly determined to lynch Mark Zuckerberg and his band of cocky coders for their presumptuous upturning of the status quo.
Most of them argue that the option to revert to the old interface should remain, claiming that the new interface is simply too much of a change to get used to.
Recently I've been spending more and more of my time in the new Facebook, and I've become a huge fan. The wider layout makes it much easier for me to see all my content at a glance. I appreciate having my status bar larger at the top. I love the ability to filter the feed into different custom tabs, including one that shows me everything in the raw and updates automatically. Browsing through massive photo albums is a breeze now. And finally, users' profile pages are not cluttered with a plethora of frivolous applications, restoring some of the clean-layout charm that drew me to Facebook in the first place.
Across the site the AJAX coding also feels tighter and more responsive, and the bugs are getting more infrequent all the time.
I find it a profound irony that Facebook users, who seem to support Barack Obama by a fair majority, are so resistant to change. Granted, their insistence on retaining the option to switch between old and new interfaces does resemble Obama's pro-choice stance, so I guess they do retain some measure of consistency.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Steve Jay
posted 9/25/08 @ 2:17 PM EST
If anyone is narrow-minded, then its the author of this article. I dont know where to begin on whats wrong with it ... but firstly, comparing Obama's message of 'change' to that of the new Facebook layout is quite bizarre. (Continued…)
Dingo
posted 9/30/08 @ 3:46 AM EST
I agree Mr Jay. No-one is objecting to the change, just that it's a change for the worse. And (as a web developer) I can see that the whole purpose of the change is to add 4 opportunities for banner adverts where only one existed before. (Continued…)
Post a Comment