Facebook Reveals Profile Makeover

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Mark Zuckerberg gave a preview of the newly revamped profile pages on his social network, Facebook, in a 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday. Shortly thereafter, the changes started going live for a select portion of users.

The new profile design focuses on visual elements in a big way. It places a few of your most recent images across the top. In the mean time, the tabs that were introduced in 2008 have been eliminated in favor of buttons on the left side of the screen, just under your profile picture. Also featured at the top of the screen is a bit of information about you, however there is nothing new, so no new privacy concerns should be raised. It’s information like your high school, your employer, where you’re from, and so forth. The redesigned page places a huge amount of emphasis on photos and makes it easier to tag images and share them with friends.

Additionally:

* On the left side of the page there’s a new featured friends area, where you can group your friends by family, high school or however you want to prominently display people.
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... * The experiences improvement allows you to add things you worked on at work, in school, or something you did with a group of friends to your profile page. It also allows you to feature the people who worked on the project with you.
* The photo areas have a more organized look, and eliminate the need to click “next” in order to get to the next set of photos. That means all your photos are on one page for easy viewing.

As is typical of most Facebook users, a certain amount of backlash is expected. Facebook users don’t generally accept change well, until another revamp is announced, then they want the old way back (which they complained about when it was introduced). But, with all the visual elements, complaints are not expected to be as boisterous as they were about a few other new releases this year.

Facebook Places, as well as some ecommerce additions, presented a host of privacy worries, which forced Facebook to make a few changes with those features.

The biggest complaint so far about the redesign is the status update box. The redesign has eliminated that box from the front page, and users are at a loss for what to do with Facebook without it. Where the old design had the status box automatically at the top, the redesign requires you to select it under the share menu of the page. This adds a step that users weren’t used to in the past, and everyone knows Facebook users aren’t the most go-with-the-flow kind of people.

The last major change in 2008 prompted the creation of a group that gained over 1 million users begging Facebook to go back to the old design. However, with over 500 million users to date and growing, the majority of users will probably accept the changes without too much fuss.

The redesign is expected to go live for all Facebook users next year.