New Facebook Today

My first reaction to the "New Facebook" compared to the "Old Facebook": Meh. Nothing too special. Everything seems clumped into one pile in profiles now.

But, today marks the official release of the New Facebook. Users will be forced to switch over to the new Facebook by the end of the week.

After browsing around on the new Facebook, I'll admit that I enjoy it. I was a skeptic, but the new features won me over.

The feature that I love the most is the homepage. The different tabs make things a lot easier and clear up some of the clutter.


The tabs on the home page almost remind me of scrolling through different RSS feeds. I'm sure plenty of people will hate the new facebook, just as they hated the mini-feed. This is a step forward for Facebook. I'm going to embrace it.

Maybe They'll Be Able to Figure Out What "Poking" Is

On September 22, the government will launch a new social network site called A-Space (not to be confused with "The A-Space" for Anarchists). On this new site, military intelligence members will be able to share tips, trends, and leads in secret intelligence and information, as well as create profile pages much like on Facebook or MySpace. This platform will encourage cross-department thinking and collaboration in the fight against terrorism and tightening national security in the new age of social media networks.

Of course, A-Space will launch with the highest of security measures, but you better be sure that hackers will try for months to crack this nut. If the designers feel this safe about their security system, maybe they should give the New Facebook designers a few tips.

Facebook Users are Pro-Choice

...As in, they want the option of the "old-facebook" as well as the "new-facebook." The protest groups on Facebook have about 1 million members collectively.

I understand why Facebook wants to move everyone over to the new Facebook. It is probably a lot easier to have everyone under one system instead of divided into two. Especially for developing future plans for Facebook and rolling out new features. But users like consistency. They are comfortable with the old Facebook and don't want to relearn a social networking site.

Facebook should keep around the option of both new and old for at least a little while longer. At the same time, they should force new users to only be allowed to use the new Facebook so they won't have to end up switching. Eventually, I think Facebook has to be under one platform. It will be painful for some, but just like the Mini-Feed, they will come to embrace it.

The Rise And Fall Of The Facebook Empire

It started with MySpace. It was a place to connect, find new music, and chat with friends. Sure, it was a little congested with traffic at time, some people had too many glitter graphics and unicorns on their profile pages, and lots of bad bands asked to be your friend (they are trying so hard), but it was still a very good resource for connecting.

Then came the advertisers. They brought their ringtones, click-on-me advertisements, and spam messages. Many MySpacers got tired quickly with signing on only to find countless porn friend requests and endless messages that they could care less about.

Then we move over to Facebook. It was so clean and basic. We could learn about our classmate's favorite movies ot reconnect with our friends we said we would never forget after high school (but did). It was so real. Minimal advertising, no spam, and no unwanted messages from unknown people (save a few stalkers you had forgotten from high school, but didn't forget you). Life was good again.

Then came open source Facebook. At first, it could be used for good. Maybe it would be nice to have a few new ways to connect? Lets add a way to draw a small note to a friend or add a little music player to show friends some new music (kind of like MySpace, but its is still clean, right?).

Open the doors to spammers, advertisers, and virus makers of the world. No, I do not want to play Oregon Trail on Facebook. No, I do not want to see which Desperate Housewives star I am most like. No, I do not want to post dozens of stupid bumper stickers all over my page. Just when we thought that the millions of useless profile applications flooding our profiles were bad enough, I received a message today that induced an eerie state of deja vu.

Facebook is clogged and they are cleaning up inactive accounts. You need to send this message to all your friends to prove your account is still active so they don't delete it." I got this message many times on MySpace from Tom. I also got a new post on my wall this week: "Dood, U gotta totally check out these new pix of u! lol. (link to a virus, that send same type of messages to all your friends)."

The new version of Facebook seems to have some gaping holes in the empire walls of security. Now that the fortress has been breached and the hoards are attacking, where will Facebook enthusiasts go next? Too bad the Facebook developers couldn't have seen this coming...oh wait...