Face It…

So people don’t like the new Facebook layout. I don’t either. It is uncomfortable, unnecessarily busy and trying too hard to be like the rising social network Twitter. As of 10.51pm there are 1,202,743 people who dislike the new layout, with only 77,744 people actually liking it. It is good news that Mark Zuckerberg is talking to the users about the changes, but one wonders quite how much he will listen to the overwhelming tide of opinion. At least, that’s what it appears to be. According to this article there are over 175million people who use Facebook. Just over one million have voted. The rest could probably be split into two groups: the lazy and the indifferent. The indifferent ones are the people who really don’t mind the new look. They think that change has happened, and so there is no point in complaining about it.

And so I feel in a quandry about it. I have added my name to the million or so others in expressing my dislike for Twitterbook, but I realise that this is an ultimately meaningless waste of my time. I have no plans to join Twitter either, it seems odd, and slightly pointless. It also shows how we (as a whole) are becoming more addicted to social networking in cyberspace than face to face. It is seen as fine to constantly update your account, or hold conversations with other users, without it seeming sad. I disagree with this, all it shows is that the users have little or no life in that they feel they need to interact with others through the site at regular intervals. My breaking news for the evening: people still have faces, you can still talk to them. They also have telephones. You do not need to do it via Twitter in the impersonal world of cyberspace.

Anyway, back to Facebook. I use Facebook as much more than a tool to find out about others. It is a way of finding information out, planning events, and interacting with people of a like mind, without the pressure of needing to be online all the time so as to stay up-to-date with the conversation. As I said, I don’t like the way Facebook has changed recently, and genuinely thought that if enough people were against the changes, then they would either change back, or forward again. That was until I read this article. It is a really interesting piece about the real world of Facebook. By which I mean the business side of the site. About how it needs these changes to keep ahead in the business world. And about how it cannot afford to change. I for one rarely consider the financial aspect of the site before. It was simply a tool to unite people. But it is, of course, a business. One that is making Zuckerberg a fair bit of cash. However this cannot last forever, and so natural evolution of his business is inevitable. That means Facebook has to change, even if a million people disagree with the changes.