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.
I don't think it matters at all what the vocal minority of users think about the redesign. Sure they made a big stink about the last design, just as they did with newsfeed, and when Facebook opened to non-college-students. However vocal they were, the numbers of users that actually quit Facebook over those issues paled in comparison to the amount of growth they saw—much of it as a result of the changes. The proof is in the numbers.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Walls are irrelevant if you have the whole world inside them. Facebook doesn't need to cooperate with other elements because it is a behemoth. There will always be a minority which wants to see more outside access, and Facebook can appease them, but they don't need to go in that direction for growth. The way out for them is reorganizing and adding more features to tie people further to the service.
