Today is day one of my new hours at work. So far so good.
My facebook finally changed over today. I knew it was coming because I was talking to my friend Paul the other day and he mentioned it, so I was sort of anxiously waiting for it to finally change over. And it did a few mintues ago. And I mean 'a few minutes ago' because about ten minutes before, I had closed out of the tab and it was still the [now] old version.
It's nothing drastic this time, which is nice. But I still must ask: why in the world do the developers there feel the need to change their damn site so much? I have never ever, in the history of my entire web browsing career, seen a site do an overhaul of their layout as often as FB. Granted, I wouldn't consider today's an overhaul, but even so, no site makes all these little changes as often. I truly don't understand it. It's not the like the new design improves functionality or speed or anything essential to make sure the site doesn't crash or the server isn't overloaded. The changes are always purely cosmetic, so to say. Sure, being a designer I care about the design and feel of a site, but their near-obsessive habit of changing things up is more of a nuisance.
Now that I've joined Twitter, I find it interesting how much facebook has been made to look like Twitter. You have your feed/home, you post your status/tweet, all of the profile pictures are square icons (all of those done by Twitter first,) and now with the new redesign, your Home and Profile links have been moved to the right. Wait... that's just like Twitter too! What's the deal?
Having been with the site (facebook) since nearly day 1 (I believe I joined about a year after it began) I have watched how the site has progressed and changed. And it has changed A LOT. Remember back in the day, when there was no "feed" and all of your updates (pokes, messages, friend requests) were in the middle column on your home page? Then they completely went nuts, added the feed (which creeped everyone out at first), moved all of your updates to the side panel, and took your profile info off of the main page and initiated the use of the tabs. Next, I remember the addition of applications, which some people went nuts with. It was bad design at first, because of all the tiny icons for every stinking application you added being located under you picture. And some people had, like, 90 of those dumb things! You would have to scroll down to infiity just to post on their wall. Then the Status was introduced, which also freaked people out at first. And then they had another overhaul and redid the entire site again, and everyone hated it. Much hatred. And then there was the chat, which was full of bugs at first and sucked. It's gotten better, though.
And there have been a lot of little updates along the way too. They dropped all the rounded corners on everything, thank goodness. Ever noticed how the button to post your status went from "Post" to "Share"? Seems like a much more friendly invitation *in soft floaty voice*: 'Here Jamie, share your thoughts with everyone.' And how it became "Connections" and not "Friends" when viewing your entire list? I guess they realized, in reality, most people aren't 'friends' with all of "Friends" on facebook.
Anyways. I'm kind of liking Twitter, now that I'm there. I will see if I stick with it, but for now it's like a shiny new toy and I'm enjoying it. It's got some good things going for it (which facebook might pick up at some point too, haha.) I like that you can customize your page a little, but not to the degree of a MySpace where most pages look tacky. The design is all very clean, it's not cluttered like facebook is, and there are no ads (hence: cleaner.)
And I like that I can follow Sesame Street. (Seriously, someone acts like they're posting as the characters, and it's awesome. Grover's posts crack me up!)
No comments:
Post a Comment