{"id":30,"date":"2009-05-02T02:27:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T06:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hmuljadi.com\/blog\/?p=30"},"modified":"2009-05-05T00:39:25","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T04:39:25","slug":"facebook-friends-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hmuljadi.com\/blog\/design-experience\/facebook-friends-page\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Rolled Out a New Friends Page – FAIL?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"facebook_friends_page\"<\/p>\n

After a long meeting with my colleagues last night at about 10:35PM, I went on Facebook.\u00a0 As usual, I did a status-update-checking routine on the homepage, scrolled up and down the page some more and finally clicked on the Friends link up top.\u00a0 Then I paused.<\/p>\n

Instead of finding a list of recent status updates, I was greeted by a brand-new “Find your friends” page.\u00a0 Hmm…\u00a0 I’ve been a Facebook user for over four years now, so I’m not really here to add more friends.\u00a0 What about that list of status updates I was here for?<\/p>\n

Slightly confused (but hopeful), I clicked around some more on the left sub-navigation bar from “All Friends” to “Browse” to “Phonebook” and finally “Recently Added”, but still no status updates.\u00a0 After clicking a while and seeing the same pages I realized that they’ve taken that nifty feature out.<\/p>\n

Yeah, no more ability to easily find which one of my friends have just updated their profile.\u00a0 Is that annoying or what?\u00a0 And I’m definitely not the only one who feel this way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t consider myself a die-hard Facebook user (like some of you with hundreds of applications installed), since I use Facebook just to stay updated with what’s new with my friends.\u00a0 Usually the chain of\u00a0 tasks that I perform is very similar to this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Look around homepage for friends’ status updates<\/li>\n
  2. Go to Friends Page to find out who’s updated their status updates<\/li>\n
  3. Stay on Friends Page and check who’s updated their profile pages (photos, notes, pages, status, relationship status. etc.)<\/li>\n
  4. Click on friend’s profile page if I’m interested enough<\/li>\n
  5. Rinse #1 and repeat for the next hour or so<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As you can see, about 95% of the time on Facebook I spend checking people’s updates.\u00a0 Now with this new change, what’s left to do?<\/p>\n

    Sure the homepage gives you a little highlight of what your friends are doing, but it’s also overfilled with chains of conversation by people I am not friends with, or those strange quizzes people take.<\/p>\n

    \"fb_quiz11\"<\/p>\n

    I’m not really sure how a decision like this came about (a victim of design by committee<\/a> perhaps?), but I think it really is taking a HUGE step backwards from what Facebook should be: a social networking site where everyone is connected with each other.\u00a0 After all, that social networking aspect of keeping in touch with what’s new with your friends is what makes Facebook so… addicting (at least for me).\u00a0 And now they’ve taken that out completely.<\/p>\n

    Am I annoyed?\u00a0 Yeah, a little, probably because now I’ll have to figure out what to do with my spare time.\u00a0 For the past few days, my number of visits to Facebook certainly has decreased at least by half, mainly because I realize I can’t check the new stuff.\u00a0 But maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, I could be working on other stuff (like working on my beach bod for the summer) instead of spending hours on Facebook.<\/p>\n

    What do you think about the new Friends page?<\/strong><\/p>\n