Facebook has rolled out a new design. In addition to several largely uncontroversial–or even welcome–changes, such as allowing businesses to have fully-fledged profiles instead of pages, it included an almost completely revamped UI that some have already dubbed “TwitterBook.”
Redesigned News Feed, from http://allfacebook.com
The new Fews Feed is dominated by status updates. The size of the font, as well as the mechanism of relaying status updates (no longer automatically prefaced by an “is”, implying a passive voice description of one’s present state, but rather inviting micropublishing) is clearly reminiscent of Twitter.
Moreover, since status updates are the most oft-updated component of a Facebook profile, inane banter has come to dominate what was once a functionally useful, if somewhat creepy and initially resisted, way to access information about what your friends have been doing on Facebook. Although the filters along the right hand side of the News Feed do allow the user to filter by type of content or by social organization (i.e. by Friends Lists or networks), it no longer appears to be as “smart” a feed as the old News Feed, which one could program to privilege certain types of content or certain contacts over others.
One user characterized the change as this: “[User] dislikes having to hunt for birthdays, events and photo updates.” This statement seemed to epitomize the pushback by users against the “Twitterbook” focus.
Facebook’s intentions are obvious: stamp out Twitter as the chief instant micropublishing platform by both encouraging users to update their status more often and by disseminating those updates more rapidly. The question remains, however, whether this is what people use Facebook for. Are Facebook and Twitter competitive or complementary services? Does Facebook’s attempts to compete with Twitter detract from the social utility of the service as described by the user quoted above?
FacebookWatch is considering methods for collective action. If you are a member of any Facebook groups opposing the new News Feed, please email tips [at] facebookwatch.org. In the interim, you can send a message detailing your complaints to Facebook through the feedback function located at http://tinyurl.com/fbookfeedback.