If it’s not broken, why change it? On September 22, 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and visionary of Facebook, introduced a new version of the social networking site that resulted in derogatory status updates and the hashtag #NewFacebook as one of the top trending topics on Twitter.
Facebook has gotten into the habit of making changes and tweaks with little or no advance warning to its 750 million users. But Facebook’s latest round of changes may be its most hated yet. Last month, Zuckerberg said this was “the biggest update that we’ve done in a long time.” In a survey conducted by Sodahead, a social voting-based site of over 1,000 people, about 86 percent said they strongly disliked the new alterations Zuckerberg and his “geniuses” have made.
People are very unhappy with the Facebook facelift. The abrupt remodeling’s biggest change is something called “Top Stories,” which is a combination of what we used to know as the “News Feed” and “Most Recent.” The News Feed showed the content Facebook thought you’d enjoy most, and Most Recent showed posts in chronological order, no matter how important they were to you.
Facebook’s Top Stories has become so cluttered that it leaves you scrolling on and on for hours until you get to the updates you actually want to see. “Now, it will act more like your own personal newspaper,” developer Mark Tonkelowitz wrote in a blog post, “You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top.”
The Ticker is another change that has aggravated many. Zuckerberg’s intentions of this new addition to the site were to keep users better updated and to provide an easier way to see and chat with friends in real time. Basically, it is a Twitter-esque scrolling bar on the right side of the home page that features rapid updates of friends’ activity. Every like, comment, wallpost, and status update is shown on this ticker. Some people have so many Facebook friends that the movement on the side of the screen is too fast to even keep up with, and it just hurts your eyes.
At that point, the feature is unusable because it goes too quickly, and nobody wants to spend their time going through it. Also, event reminders like birthdays and friend requests are squashed under the ticker, causing great unorganization.
Facebook has automatically created friends lists based on profile information your friends have in common with you: your school, work, family, city, etc. I’m sure many Hewitt girls have noticed The Hewitt School button that appears on the left side of their homepages, as I did. The updates of all your friends who identify themselves as members of the Hewitt community on Facebook can be found by clicking there.
In addition, you can now subscribe to people. There are three different levels to which you can do this: “all,” “most,” and “important.” “All” shows you what you would see in the ticker, “most” shows you what is seen in Top Stories, and “important” is categorized as changes to profile information (change in city, employer, relationship status, etc.)
By clicking one of the three options from the subscribe button, you are able to customize what you want to leave out in order to pick and choose what you see from that friend. With this new tool, you are also able to subscribe to people whom you aren’t friends with, adding their public posts to your Top Stories.
The specialized friends lists and subscribing was intended to reduce noise for users. Facebook says it’s trying to provide less feeds because its users don’t want everything.
But it is in fact doing the exact opposite. Most people don’t want to spend time creating friends lists and subscribing. They want Facebook to know what they want to see and from whom they want to see it.
The site’s recent renovations have people so fed up that they have been fleeing to Google+. Facebook never really had any competitors, despite Myspace’s fading ambitions. But people are actually shifting over to Google+ because they just can’t deal with it anymore. Facebook has proved that it will not bow to pressure by its users and that it will continue to do what it wants. Zuckerberg is ignoring our need for a simple tool to stay connected.
Our 750 million-member cybercommunity has experienced our fair share of changes to our little online home. In the beginning, we were annoyed. Some even threatened to quit using the site. But no one really followed through. Over time, people began to live with the new updates. No matter which “improvements” Zuckerberg makes, people are going to be unhappy because they don’t like change once they’ve become accustomed to something. That said, the vicious cycle will probably repeat itself every time a new layout comes out.
I and many others agree that there is no need to keep updating the site if no one’s complaining. Facebook shouldn’t force the changes upon their longstanding users. They should ask if we want to stick with the classic version or upgrade to the new style. If I was Mark Zuckerberg, I would listen to my audience and change back to the old format…and fast!