Geekadelphia Rants: Top 5 Reasons Why New Facebook is Better
You know what we’re tired of? Dozens of invites for petitions and groups flooding our Facebook inbox. Petition Against the New Facebook! Bring Back Old Facebook! 5,000,000 Strong For Original Facebook! You know what? Shut up. We’re actually fans of the new Facebook layout, and we’ll tell you why.
1. Less Crap on the Wall: We all have them. Friends of ours who pile on the applications. Quizzes, Movie Picks, Book Clubs, and oh, how can we forget Mob / Zombie Wars? Finally, with all those applications placed in a separate tab, we no longer have to browse through a dozen stupid LOLcats to get to the wall or friend info.
Why are people so up in arms about this? Is the Arrested Development trivia box and Little Green Patch application keeping people from reading your info and realizing what a loser you actually are, despite how much you might know about the Bluths or how large your virtual plant is? Stop whining. If people really care, they can click on “Boxes”. Chances are, they don’t.
The wall filter function is another fantastic addition. Smack on the front page, you can narrow down the news with a quick click. It’s great. Learn to love it.
2. Improved Photo Galleries: The old Facebook had a decent photo gallery system, sure. And all the basics are still there on the new FB. Tagging images, the great upload feature, the ability to crop your image down for your profile picture. Many of the features rival Flickr in terms of greatness in my opinion, and I adore that photography site.
However old Facebook had one rather annoying issue. The organization of photo albums.
Seen here are Tim’s albums from his Facebook. You’re welcome Tim. On old Facebook, the albums were lined up in a single column on the left of your profile, or straight down when opened up separately. With the new Facebook, you’ve got a really nice interface that scrolls right through them, while leaving your profile pictures (your best mug shots) frozen on the right. Now all of your drunk photos are even more accessible. Awesome.
3. Large Image & Thumbnails With New Photos: There is a semi-decent application on Facebook called Big Picture. I have nothing against this one, but hey, one less application on Facebook is never a bad thing (unless we’re talking about Scrabulous, RIP). While Big Picture still exists, the people at Facebook got… well, the picture, and decided to let you have a large image on your wall when you uploaded a new gallery.
I love this option. Show off your favorite shot in style from your freshly uploaded gallery. Not your thing? That’s fine. There is an option (see screenshot) to take that large image off and leave it as a single line or just a small set of thumbnails.
4. Improved Notes Section – All of your notes are now organized into what looks like a really great blog site. All of your previous ramblings about politics, girls, drinking, or whatever it is you kids like to blag about these days? They are listed on the right.
If you pay a visit to the note section yourself, you’ll note (ugh) an RSS feed and a list of notes that mention you. Did old Facebook provide RSS feeds? They might have, but I had absolutely no idea about it. So that makes it brand new. Having that Notes About You column on the right is just as good as having a ‘incoming links’ section on your WordPress. Cause let’s face it, that’s all you really care about.
5. The Advertising – WHOA WHAT? Yeah, that’s right, we listed the advertising as one of the new things we LIKE about Facebook. Why? Remember what Myspace did when they got bought out and redid their ad campaigns? The ridiculous ad-themed layouts for every awful blockbuster under the sun? Anyone remember the WENDY’S ads? Those Baconators all over my web browser made me want to throw up.
If this is the worst we’re going to get, than you know what? We’ll take it. And if you’re the type who adores getting bombarded with ads, guess what? There’s a MORE ADS button below the advertising, and it takes you to an ad board. Not sure how many people go to that part of Facebook on a daily basis, but hey, at least they’re thinking of you, you freak.
Extra Credit: Helpful Balloons - Guess what? The people at Facebook knew some of you would be lost, confused, and scared when they launched a new layout. So what did they do? There are these helpful little guys littered through out the new template.
So there you have it. New Facebook isn’t so bad. Learn to enjoy it. Facebook’s original users are all grown up, and guess what? Now the site is too.
see? I was very selective with with apps i had put boxes on my wall and while I love that the photos are different but I want to put my boxes on my front page
no one is going to look at my profile and click 4 tabs of stuff.
it becomes a profile site rather than a profile page
and yes i suck
But Facebook isn’t listening to the simple suggestions it’s customers are giving them in droves and scores, and Facebook is treating it’s bread and butter users with contempt and disdain. Bring back the applications. Introduce a toggle to the old format which had a small enough memory footprint to do this. Allow the pics format grid to be customizable by the user to 4×5/5×4 and other display arrangements. Allow all the pages to be customizable by the user. This is all simple and doable. There was already the Developer app that allowed the old. Embed that into the code. That worked GREAT! I will sit back for the next week and expect this to get done.
If my life was at a point that I started joining groups and complaining about how the new facebook sucks, I obviously should do more with my life.
The new facebook is rather nice once you dive in and get used to everything. People want change, but not when it comes to facebook.
Seriously. I’m glad you blogged about this. Everyone is flipping out about the new Facebook, but there’s certainly MORE than 5 reasons why it’s so much better. But you know what – most people aren’t as internet friendly as they’d like to think they are. It seems people who are experienced with the web, programming, geekiness, etc – all think the new Facebook is great. But the “average” internet users are all confused and pissed off.
Personally I think it was a great upgrade, and I wish everyone would just shut up.
Haha I deleted my old facebook and until I read this article I had no idea there was a new one. Good read though, well done.