Facebook, were they wrong?

When I accessed the popular social networking site Facebook a few weeks ago, I hardly noticed a change. As usual the Facebook userbase created enough of a cloud with their uproar that even CNN reported their outrage at the new layout. I cannot even imagine what those guys are gonna do now, Facebook has officially taken over the region in my book that is primary social networking.

What is it that has everyone so upset? Can you place a blame on Facebook for following the sudden rage over Twitter? The fact is that Facebook re-aligned their website based on the pretense that the “Twitter” style of social networking was obviously becoming very popular, and seeing as how Facebook already had this functionality, why not put it center stage?

Most people do not want to know what your doing every other minute, most people go to Facebook to add photos, write on peoples walls, and well use Facebook like MySpace. Facebook’s new layout makes that style of use very hard, and clearly the vast groups of people who are chanting for a revert, have that style.

My suggestion to Facebook would be to allow options of layout on the front page. Something the developers might be able to learn from MySpace is that you are able to alter the actual layout of containers both on your home page and profile page. I feel that this feature when added to Facebook would push the platform past a line that MySpace would be able to reach.

I sincerely doubt that Facebook will actually make a change back to the original layout, if you remember the last time Facebook users grouped together and literally petitioned to have it reverted, nothing happened. Its called innovation, things change over time and although at first they may appear to be completely wrong, after a while you start to notice that it actually makes sense.

Think about the history of Twitter, did anyone see that coming? I had a hard time believing for a while that a social network based solely around instantaneous status updates would work, but at that time smart phones weren’t the rage they are today. Facebook was not wrong in their design changes, I think that they were doing what they thought was in their best interest, which was to center their site around real-time updates, which for a Twitter user like myself, is perfect.