Things I like from new facebook, and miss from old facebook

Now that facebook has changed UI again, here are some things that jogged my memory.

------------------------------------------
Like from new:

newsfeed. I used to dislike it because it allowed stalker activity, but it really does allow you to keep up with your circle of friends without having to visit everyone's walls.

group interaction. old facebook groups were fan pages, they weren't easy to organize stuff for an actual active group.

------------------------------------------
Miss from old (2005-2007):

listing friends by their social networks (aka: colleges). It was cool for people to see that I have 15 friends from UCI, 5 from Berkeley, etc. This made having friends going to a variety of schools very cool, so that the list was longer on the left side of your profile.

listing people by classes. I remembered I thought HOLY SHIT when facebook was tapped in to UCLA's class registry. You could list the classes you were taking. For one reason, you could show your friends what you were taking. But more importantly, you could message the group of people who were taking that class in case you missed a lecture and wanted to ask something. It was single handedly the best part of facebook. I remember they got rid of it around 2007 or 2008 when they introduced the most radical design change (the ones where they started introducing apps and opening it to high school kids through invites).

Neutral: I am neutral to allowing teenagers on FB. It's definitely made it easier for our church community to interact. But kids shouldn't be exposed at this level. Kids are naive and don't know where to draw the line in terms of putting themselves out there. Especially kids that are making a mockery of themselves without knowing it. But whatever, there's still good things that can come out of it, so I have no strong opinion either way.

Only thing I will complain about is that facebook could have still kept it's original role as a college oriented website (to make social AND academic life easier). But they drowned the academic features. Such a pity, the new generation of college kids will never get the same FB academic advantages we got (along with advantage of posting party pictures without your mom seeing it).

5 comments:

J.Frosty said...

NO MAMA THAT ISN'T ME!

I wish FB would allow you to set up your ui to how you please like with a blog

Khorn said...

@ Jon:

Do you mean like an academic blackboard, Window Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Word Ribbons, apps on your phone, etc. (I could go on). Where you can drag and drop what tools and apps you want? They should have done that by now. I think it would attract more users. Though the stupid ad boxes will still be on the page somewhere.

J.Frosty said...

lol yes, exactly. but more or less just rearrange the stuff they have already. granted they get to put their ads somewhere. if you look at how to design this blog, i want it to be like that.

Mac OBryan said...

i totally forgot, the old FB locked the wall position in the middle, but you could move info boxes and some apps to different spots. it allowed some creativity. but no more! god i hated it when they made us get rid of the "notes about me" which i used as my online notepad to remind myself of things.

Khorn said...

Get the new facebook profile timeline. Looks interesting. The new profile doesn't come out until the 28th I think. But you can get it by doing a simple thing. Go to the link below and watch the video.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/get-the-new-facebook-profile-right-now