Call me what you will. I’ve heard a lot of descriptors attached to my name over the years, but one I’ve not heard is “neophobe”. I don’t mind change in the least. In fact, I rather enjoy it.
When it comes to the internet, including social media platforms like Facebook, you have to expect change. Like the man said, change is the only constant. And when I hear my friends pooh-poohing new interfaces, new designs and re-branding of their favourite websites, I’m usually one of the first to roll my eyes and smirk behind their backs.
That changed yesterday, when I called a friend who had yet responded to a message I had sent him on Facebook several days before. “I know, I know,” he said with not a little degree of aggravation. “I know I have messages. But I can’t find them. Everything has moved.”
Of course he was right.
Now it would be just too easy to complain about change for change sake alone. We can crack open our Marketing 101 textbooks and discuss such banal subjects as the “New Coke” and other forms of corporate hubris. But I think its more important to roll with the punches, so I have designed this guide to assist those who, like my friend, are a bit befuddled by the onslaught of redesigns subjected upon otherwise loyal customers by Facebook. Here are 10 pointers to help you get accustomed to the new design, with a diagram explaining the subtle changes that have been made:
- Everything on the left is now on the right. Adjust your mousing tendencies accordingly.
- All the hours you spent configuring your friend lists to help you navigate through your news feeds – kiss those hours goodbye.
- Your news feed settings – deleted. Go do it again.
- The default of 50 friends only in your news feed is back. So if you have more than 50 friends, you may want to go back and re-configure that.
- Your privacy settings – nixed. Go do it again.
- Bookmarks? Ha!!!
- Those apps you blocked from your feed? They’re back. Block them again.
- Messages have been moved. It now takes a couple extra clicks to go to your message inbox.
- Chat messages have been merged with your other messages.
- Chatting is easier, I’m told. But I wouldn’t know. Few of my friends spend a lot of time on Facebook anymore.
Here is a visual guide to help you make sense of those changes. Keep it handy, because you’ll probably have to reconfigure your settings again next month when they reset everything on you again.
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This is excellent. I’m one of the ones that had no clue it changed and worse, how to use it. I hate the layout because it’s no longer intuitive and frankly it never really was but at least I got used to it.
You’re list above is tremendously helpful.
Wow I had no idea that I am only seeing 50 people in my home feed.
That is utter crap. Every time these sites make changes it’s an ant-social one and it sickens me. I often wonder what geeky pimpled out tards they have running the show. Trolls who can’t make friends, high paid trolls who sit heavy breathing over their own Facebook Frankensteins.
These are not people who should be in control of functionality. Get some women in there, get a few mommies, get some social butterflies in there, get people who are not droll tech monkeys.
Get people who clearly understand what makes “community” a community.
But this escapes every social network, every time.
Twitter, Myspace, Facebook… all make “improvements” that ass blow so hard I can’t help but laugh through my confusion…and rage.
Lord knows what was wrong with the previous layout. Nothing.
It did suck, but it sucked in a way that we all finally understood.
Now I’m saying the same thing repeatedly… Death To Tech Trolls.
I’ll use your tips to reconfigure my settings.
Christina, I’m still trying to figure out how you get your avatar to look left and right and left again…
Oh God, your avatars are on the left, not the right. Who came up WITH THAT? I hate that. Who came up with that?A frikken idiotic tech troll who wouldn’t know feng shui even if it crawled up there anus and devoured their insides.
ON THE RIGHT, NOT THE LEFT is what I meant.
Grrrrrr,,,, see how fury clouds the mind.
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