I don’t know about your Facebook feed this morning but mine is filled with people complaining about the new redesign. At least I think they are — I can’t quite tell because I’m having a hard time reading anything because of the new redesign. Facebook’s f8 developer conference kicks off tomorrow and in advance of that it’s begun emphasizing “Top Stories” over all recent posts. Apparently the concept of LINEAR TIME, which has served humanity’s need to organize information quite well for centuries, was not quite good enough for Facebook.
Facebook users who don’t regularly visit the site will only see these top stories, which are based on your relationship to the person who posted, the type of story posted and the number of comments and likes received. Frequent visitors will see an option to expand recent posts at the top of the page. Top stories are marked with a little blue triangle in the top-left corner of each post.
Other information now appears in the Twitter-like feed on the right side that we’ve been hearing about for a while.
This is the whole problem with web companies. They make something good, they have success, they can then hire a lot of smart people, then those people get antsy and want to rebuild the thing. Car makers don’t force you to relearn how to drive a car every year.
It bears noting that this is likely only a prelude to a lot more changes being introduced at f8. By this time next week, Facebook will likely look very different. Although the annoying friends from grade school and bothersome loudmouthed acquaintances with extreme political beliefs will still be there.
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