Breaking: Facebook Releases New Design
Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 20th, 2008 10:13 PMFacebook has been testing out the new profile design for the past five months but for the first time ever, they have released the new full site design (pictured below). You can access the new site by visiting www.new.facebook.com.
New Homepage
The first noticeable change is a complete removal of the left-hand sidebar. Instead all of the links have been moved to a wider sidebar on the right hand side which appears to be double the size of the original. The applications have been moved to two different locations in the header and to the right hand sidebar.
New Applications Dropdown
There is a new drop-down menu in which users can view all of their applications. It’s not that great though if you have hundreds of applications installed as it takes a fair amount of time to browse through the applications (see the video below).
New Publisher Links
The top of the newsfeed now displays links to the publisher box on the new profile. This enables quick access for posting new notes, new photos, new videos and sharing links with your friends.
Bookmarks in Sidebar
As mentioned above, Facebook has moved the application links to two places: the navigation bar and the sidebar. The sidebar version shows only 8 applications but by clicking “See All” expands to show other applications. For some reason not all my applications are displayed in these links. For instance my “Mouse Hunt” link is no longer present. Additionally, it doesn’t appear that these links show up as the default links you initially had under the old design.
Removal of Social Ads?
Facebook used to display SocialAds flyers but apparently those are no longer displayed. I’m not sure if this is a fluke or a strategic decision by Facebook. Facebook will be announcing new initiatives on Wednesday and perhaps some of these initiatives are expected to remove this one. My guess is that this is a temporary removal as it doesn’t make much sense to completely remove SocialAds flyers. That also means that all ad campaigns that were running will not currently display on the new homepage or new profile.
Honestly this doesn’t make much sense and I’m guessing that Facebook may have instead chosen to redesign SocialAds. I have reached out to Facebook and am waiting for them to respond at this point.
New Friends Page
There is now a new friends page. While it is not substantially different the friend lists have been moved from the right hand side to the left hand side. The width has also been expanded to accommodate the new site design.
Design Feedback Form
Facebook has also included a form for users to provide feedback about each page’s new design. They have also emphasized that this feedback is expected to be positive and courteous as I’m sure they expect some negative feedback about the new design. On every page you can simply click “Send Feedback about this Page” directly above the navigation bar. Over the coming month, Facebook will be making updates to make sure that the new design provides a good user experience.
Conclusion
The new site design is much cleaner and simplified a lot of the features on the site. The fact that one of my applications didn’t display on the homepage leads me to believe that there are still bugs on the new design. Facebook is expected to announce the new design to users over the coming days at which point applications will begin noticing new users interfacing in new ways. The true test will be whether or not applications experience a reduction in growth rate. We will have to wait and see!
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Cheers - Eric
blog.pickuppal.com
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Please go back to the using old Facebook profile for now. Facebook has not given developers enough time to modify apps for this new profile so they will all be broken for a week or two.
Apparently a bunch of developers got together to coordinate this message. LULZ.
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http://register.new.facebook.com/editaccount.php
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Flock
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1) Facebook can now include the popular 300×250 ad unit… Before this FB could only use the odd 120×600.
2) FB’s ad strategy are ads within the news feed. The wider and more focused view on the news feed should help their inline advertising campaigns.
(who is FB’s competition in advertising that everyone except FB is overlooking? FriendFeed)
Overall impression - Congrats, the new home page is a much better design for the Facebook advertising team. We should see revenues jump considerably.
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Hm, I'm in the San Diego Network and don't see the new design just yet... probably another day or two. And that new.facebook.com link doesn't work for me either - defaults to reg. site.
Cheers,
Mari
@marismith
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I noticed a few small features missing:
- No wall post count
- Can't browse by clicking Birthdays or Networks anymore
- Can't filter activity anymore, and perhaps RSS are gone?
I'll miss all those things and having everything on the same page (with the exception of people with too many apps).
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There will be two social ads on the right side of the profile pages, selected placement of one social ad on the home page.
Those with access right now can already see the ads.
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I mean I am sure this will be nice and all however it is going to be too difficult for a lot of people to figure out and may be frustrating
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