Carrot Creative Blog

New data has come to light that pins the success of Facebook’s new visual overhaul with a dismal 20% approval rating. According to Mark Zuckerberg, “Around 20% of our users have now migrated to the new platform and it has been received well after people get used to it.” ¹

As with other novel features on Facebook the redesign has clearly been met with massive opposition. Now the real question is, what should Facebook do? That’s easy, think of the user.

Changing the layout of Facebook’s profile is akin to going through a botched nose job and looking at yourself in the mirror the next day. It’s familiar, yet distant, a bit inflamed, and things aren’t where you remember them being. Users are uncomfortable with this radical departure from their beloved Facebook pages. What was once a quick and easy way to stay in touch with your college cohorts is now a multi-layered social networking behemoth. The redesign manages to alienate Facebook’s core group of users by moving critical contact information to ancillary tabs, and making the overall user experience much more complex.

At the same time, the introduction of NewsFeed to the profile page offers a massive improvement in the readability of the former banal wall feature. By increasing the prominence and functionality of the wall, Facebook has a created a functional engagement point for users. It’s now much easier to carry out complete discussions over the wall in a format that is far more meaningful than before. This one point may not make up for the other design gaffes, but it does show that Facebook is thinking in the right direction. It’s attempting to move the entire platform into a communications portal, instead of merely a treasure-trove of marketing data.

Now we all wait with eager anticipation for the next big scandal from the folks in Palo Alto, which better be juicy enough for Gawker to cover, or else we’ll be forced to do it for them.

¹ Source