Whether you love it, hate it, or ignore it… the redesigned Facebook is here to stay. Many in the blogging world have been theorizing why Facebook has made the design choices that is has in the redesign. Are they trying to focus their efforts on becoming a new social bookmarking and sharing site? Have they been drinking too much of the Silicon Valley kool-aid? As Eric Eldon at VentureBeat puts it:

“I’ve long argued that the value of Facebook is in the fact that it has convinced millions to share real information about themselves — versus the fake information you see on MySpace and many other social networks. But the thing is, it seems Facebook users want to share real information along the lines of glittery photos. It wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook sees a sustained protest from millions of users who don’t care about publishing, in the first place, who just want to decorate their profiles to show off to their friends.”

And so they have. With bloggers pondering and Facebookers petitioning, I thought it would be interesting to see what people around the office think…
“They’ve improved the control you have over your profile and privacy. Who can see what of your content and so on. That is always an area close to my heart as I don’t like to share personal info with my business network and vice versa. And they really start to elevate the most recent content, so it’s easier to keep up with friends who update their pages more frequently. I like the refreshed look and feel, it’s definitely easier to navigate. But I think they also sneaked in more ad space, I didn’t notice these big ads before on my profile pages.”
Sonja Scharrer, Operations
“No likie. At first I thought it hadn’t finished loading, when in fact it had. My reaction was ‘really?’. And when I reverted back, I felt better.”
Vaibhavi Bhide, Engagement Management
“The ‘new’ Facebook does a good job at separating out the content of what you really want. What was once cluttered and often times kept below the fold is now easily accessible. When viewing someone’s profile you can see their wall, their info, photos, or more separately; something that was cluttered into one page before. I think overall there is a cleanliness to it and I think this also has to do with the way we are viewing webpages (widescreen, better screens) then when Facebook first started. The ability to only have to look through certain amount of pages will help with how users interact with the network.
“One thing you will see is a lot of people hating it. Well remember how many people ‘hated’ mini feed. Now that is the most popular feature. So we are very quick to hate on something when we get familiar with it.”
St. John Oneil-Dunne, Global Business Development

“I’ve been slowing my Facebook activities and this was the trigger for me to (almost) totally abandon Facebook – I don’t like the design at all – too spread out, too confusing.”
David Feldt, SVP, Managing Director
“I pretty much stick to facebook on my blackberry, and I’m really happy with the clutter free bb app, so the redesign kinda missed me…”
Jason Harper, Analytics
“I like the ’spread out’ design. One instance in particular, the new tabbed profile is one of my favorites. Especially moving the application boxes to a tab that is hidden upon first view of a user’s profile. The old profiles were so cluttered. I have stayed off myspace because I liked the simplicity of facebook – clean and consistent design made it easy to find what you were looking for. I think the apps initially threatened that simplicity.
“Overall, the site is still very much the same in my opinion. It just takes a couple days to figure out where your navigation went.”
Steve Conroy, Interface Engineering
“I know I’m still viewing (and taking screenshots for presentations) with the old view. Whereas, when MySpace redesigned their layout, I leaped over immediately.
“To me, the redesign seems to position Facebook more and more as a ‘hub’ for all your feeds and widgets, like NetVibes, rather than a social site. When I think about Facebook Connect and various efforts to break apps out of the barriers of the walled garden… it seems like Facebook is going to merely become the collection point of all that activity.
“I’m not sure I like that move. ‘Groups’ is one of the only places that I think brands can be decently effective on the site today, and I think the redesign has buried that service even more. I’ve never been a big fan of traditional banner ads on Facebook… I guess the ‘voting’ aspect makes it interesting socially, but where can a good brand go to get a little decent community action going.”
Marta Strickland, Strategy
“As someone who’s signed up for every app that would have me, I have to say that I like the tabs for separating things out. That said, I’d like a bit more customization as far as being able to put something specific on my front page.
“I think the redesign makes a lot of sense for them. But it does feel like a whole new site, so drop-off from previous users seems likely to be expected. The mini-feed seems to be getting better at intelligently updating. I think it looks nicer in this design. Friendfeed is taking over that role for me these days, but FB isn’t going away anytime soon…”
Evan Cordes, Developer