Like, around 750 million users of Facebook, I logged on to the world’s biggest social media network this morning and was immediately annoyed. Facebook had changed its user interface, again. Gone was the “Most Recent” button, which allowed users to see what their friends have posted in a simple, straightforward, and chronological order. Now Facebook is indulging, again, in outright effrontery: employing its own secret algorithmic sauce to spice up what it considered to be the most important “top stories,” while plattering it with other recent posts quite down on the page.
Facebook has also added a “Ticker” at the top right hand side of the page, which provides a real-time Twitter-like stream of status updates from all my friends. When I first checked it, it was packed with complaints about the new interface change. Judging solely from comments of my friends, people don’t want Facebook deciding for them what’s most important, Facebook’s suggestions are wrong, irrelevant and insulting, and why oh why oh why can’t Facebook leave a single good thing alone?
Inertia is preferred and yes, people hate change. And, they’re switching to Google+ (which conveniently opens its doors to the general public today), or Twitter, or giving up on the Internet altogether.
When you also disgruntle along with nearly a billion people, it becomes a fairly big news right away: The biggest tech news sites brimmes with the story within seconds. Moments after I encountered the interface change, TechCrunch offered the almost instantaneously obsolete “How to Go Back to the Previous Facebook Interface (While You Still Can)” while Gizmodo ambitiously promised “Everything You Need to Know About the New Facebook Update.”
Experienced users of Facebook nearly collapsed- thanks to the overwhelming déjà vu. More than any other consumer-engaged company, Facebook routinely