New Face

So today I logged into my Facebook account and found that the layout had been changed. The new look has the user going straight to what is referred to as the Facebook homepage. In my opinion it is very similar to the previous one with the huge exception that the News Feed is no longer there.

When discussing the changes with friends, one commented that he actually missed the News Feed section because it was a way to see new updates on his friends and was a major reason why he went on other friends' profiles in the first place. This surprised me as at first, the News Feed was disliked and many protested when it first appeared as people thought it to be intrusive. Now the general consensus was that it was helpful in keeping active on friends' profiles that you would normally not visit.

The new layout according to one friend reminds her now of Twitter with the majority of the Facebook homepage just updates on new status changes. Similar to Twitter, it answers the question "what are you doing" and is brief, clear, and concise. Could this be a way for Facebook to compete with Twitter?

With a new layout still comes the ambient awareness experience as it continues to provide snippets of one's life which generally builds to one overall impression of oneself. As one friend put it, new face but same eyes (alluding to same exeprience with ambient awareness as I discussed with her the term beforehand).