

The Importance of the Facebook Redesign - unalone
http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/84638445/on-wednesday-facebook-is-going-to-reveal-a-design

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nategraves
I'll be interested to see how well this redesign is received by Facebook's
users. Their last redesign was--from what I heard among the Facebook users I
know--not terribly appreciated. Hopefully this added functionality garners
more than a collective groan because it's definitely important for Facebook to
continue innovating and staying ahead of or at least keeping up with
competitors.

~~~
unalone
Users complain every time, and they tend to always feel nostalgia for a year
and a half ago. You can follow the Facebook redesigns from the various groups
Facebook set up, and it tends to be that they miss the one that's two editions
old.

Right now Facebook's in a position where they _don't_ have to change in order
to stay up top. Their design is pretty tight - tighter than any other site -
and they've got enough of a monopoly that people don't feel the need to switch
over. Their real competition comes from mobile sites like Loopt, and those are
still a pretty slim set of the market right now.

Part of me thinks they're innovating just to appeal to product sales. Another
part of me thinks that some of the people up top at Facebook are innovating
because they really think they're breaking ground. I'd bet it's a mix of the
two.

~~~
whatusername
Remember Apple and the iPod mini... Just because you're better than the
competition - doesn't mean you're product is the best it could be.

~~~
unalone
If we were going by that story, wouldn't the moral be "It's okay if your
product is faulty at first, so long as you're far enough ahead that you can
fix things before you develop competition"?

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jonas_b
I think what would make Facebook kick ass is if they could find a way to keep
you updated on what happens in groups where there is conversation you actually
want to participate in, without blurring your inbox with crap.

~~~
unalone
Absolutely! I think the problem that they're running into is that it's tricky
to make something like that without cluttering.

The best solution I've seen is what the Vanilla forum system does
(<http://getvanilla.com>). They provide a bunch of options to give you slices
into information. What are the last 5 threads you visited? Which are new?
Which were the last 5 you _replied_ to? The idea of thinly slicing information
is excellent and works very well if you're a focused web site. (It inspired a
lot of my startup's front page design.)

The problem is that Facebook is all about the aggregation. They can't dedicate
that many resources to one application. For them, it's all about that little
notification window, and that means that you can probably only really give
users one little notification for any particular update. So, unless their
users click into the Groups application, there's nothing they can do.

It would be interesting to see if, now that Facebook's increasing their level
of aggregation, they begin increasing the amounts of information an
application can pipe to users. That might let Groups gain prominence again, at
the risk of increasing the level of spam existent on the site.

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Shamiq
Well written, unalone. Any thoughts on what the next iteration will be?
(beyond "lifestreaming")?

I understand I'm asking for a purely hypothetical prediction.

~~~
unalone
The only thing I can think of is they'll move towards mobile: taking advantage
of GPS and making a more localized service for finding people.

Facebook's one of the few sites I've never predicted correctly. That last
change was unexpected - I didn't expect they'd decentralize the profile pages
that much. A part of me still hopes they'll tie Pages into the user's profile
page more - "Books" taking you to communities created for each specific book -
and I think that would be a good method for them to bring more content holders
into the fray, but for whatever reason, I doubt that will actually happen.

The process tends to be that a site will unify its design, then break it up
more. Facebook is unifying everything right now. The next step would be to
find new niches to break the site down into, so they can bring a new fresh
feel to the site. Considering they've all-but-abandoned the "base it on
colleges" design, and now they're moving towards more commercial things, I'm
wondering if they'll begin shifting it back again with a new emphasis on
networks. I wouldn't bet either way, though: my track record is pretty bad for
Facebook guesses.

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thwarted
_On Wednesday, Facebook is going to reveal a design that’s going to break a
lot of boundaries online. They’re going to reveal the first popular
lifestreaming service._

On Wednesday, they'll reveal a design a lifestreaming service. It remains to
be seen if it will be popular. The site can continue to be popular based on
the number of users it has, but in order for the new design to be popular, the
users need to actually use its features. Until it is released, it is too early
to tell if that will be the case.

~~~
unalone
When was the last time Facebook released a feature* that wasn't picked up by
the majority of its users within 6 months? The newsfeed, pages, and video all
become huge fast, because Facebook keeps things intuitive.

It's not about features. Facebook added nothing. They just reorganized what
they had already, and in doing so changed their focus.

*Not counting Facebook Marketplace, which was reliant on money to work.

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jfornear
Nice write up, unalone. I'm anxious to see how the typical Facebook user
reacts to these changes myself.

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omouse
The problem with Facebook is that it'll remain an involuntary walled garden.

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unalone
So? Most people don't want constant out access from the information they have
there. The one important asset, photos, already can be easily extracted.

If you choose to use Facebook, you choose to play by their rules. Nobody
forces you to pick them over anybody else.

~~~
Jebdm
Sure, but if I choose a competitor I either have to convince everyone I know
to switch or be lonely. This isn't to say that this is Facebook's fault (well,
I guess you could make the argument that they haven't tried to connect their
network up with others, but that's not really their responsibility either),
but it still is a huge pain.

(Similar is the problem with AIM; I don't like it, but few people I talk to
use anything else.)

~~~
unalone
It _is_ a pain, but if it ever gets too much you can quit using it. So I don't
hold it against him.

(Zuckerberg recently said on Twitter that Facebook is opening itself up as
much as possible this year, so hopefully everybody gets to be happy!)

