TechTalk: Social not-working: Facebook’s numerous GUIses

Like a group of teenagers with their fads, or a woman with her clothes, social networking giant Facebook has suddenly changed again. If Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t asked his loyal and numerous users to master enough user interfaces already, another one has come along to baffle them and question why they use the site.

We were all used to the Facebook of yore. It had a nice and uncluttered interface, and only had one news feed on the homepage. Now, all [or, as I have found, most] of the users have an extra, mini “news ticker” on the side of their main feed that displays all of your friend’s actions as they do them. Several friends of mine have preferred to call this a “mini-feed”, but I just think it’s an item that can cause more privacy invasions in 10 minutes than a Murdoch journalist can pull off in an entire year. Give it a few days, and this fast-flowing friend feed will be able to publish your visits to the loo- and not only in quantity and length, but probably in consistency and quality, too. For me, this little news feed is a terrifying thing, and could just be a change too far.

Change, in general, though, is a much needed thing in social networking. Much like animals and humans, social networks must compete and adapt to survive and thrive. Both Facebook and Twitter have applied several tweaks to their sites recently, both to improve the user experience and also provide extra revenue, as (and let us not forget) social networks are businesses after all. When social networking sites don’t change, they quickly fade away into the pages of our mind. There was a time when Myspace was the social networking king, and had over 100 million accounts. However, it didn’t change much to the eye; and both the “myspace whores” and casual users posted their last bulletins and picture comments, and left quietly through the back door. Now its disgraced name rests in the same pit as the other casualties: Bebo and Hi5, and is now the realm of indie-kids and retro-geeks.

There is no doubt that Facebook’s constant changes seem to be more applicable to the song “Hot 'n’Cold” by Katy Perry than they are to any viable business strategy. These changes aren’t exactly being loved by users, either. A friend of mine, with a string of non-repeatable words, told me of her disgust for the new site, and the disapproval of the users was even covered by international news network CNN. This isn’t the first time that users have verbally rebelled over changes to the site, and you can count on the fact that it won’t be the last. While some of these changes are incredibly infuriating, Facebook is still the free and convenient way to get hold of all my friends- especially when I, a poor, struggling student, can hardly afford to top up my phone. So for now, Facebook has won this battle- but if they keep ringing these changes, I’m hoping that they’ll lose the war.