Facebook’s Facelift, part 2

The new Facebook design has undergone quite a few changes since I last reviewed it. There are both new features and tweaks to old features—some good, some bad. All in all the new interface is still a step up from what they had before, but there are still some things I would have done differently.

The worst tweak they’ve made, in my opinion, is the removal of the publishing links on the homepage. I mentioned them last time: a group of links for doing things such as updating one’s status, adding photos, etc. They were incredibly useful because they allowed a user to add a lot of content to their profile from one convenient location. On more than one occasion since their removal I’ve looked to use them only to remember that they’re no longer there—they’ve been replaced with a much less useful utility to update one’s status. It really is a shame, because that was one of my favorite features of the new design.

Right below where the publishing box used to be is the further updated news feed. The news feed label has now been pulled down so that it is flush with the news feed category tabs, saving a small amount of space, and the design has been updated so that it’s more consistent with the rest of the site. This is good.

One of the best new features is the ability to comment on certain news feed items. What this means is that instead of the wall being used as a location for users to comment items on their friends news feeds, they can comment on the items themselves. Ideally this will increase the signal to noise ratio on the wall, and enable separate comment threads having to do with news items rather than the general discussion on one’s wall. It will also prevent any ambiguity that might have stemmed from talking about news items on the wall.

Again, the further updated Facebook design is a step up from even the design I wrote about a few weeks ago, although I bemoan the loss of that publisher feature at the top of one’s homepage. It doesn’t seem as though the new design is out of the beta stage yet, so let’s see what Mr. Zuckerberg has in store for us.