September 15, 2008, 12:16 AM — There is a reason that so far, there are close to 2,000,000 who have joined the facebook group called "1,000,000 Against the New Facebook Layout!" It feels more like sitting at a desk job now, having to navigate through tabs to find things that were before on a home page.
They are missing the entire point of what their original idea was: social networking. When we network, we want to EXPRESS OURSELVES. With this new design, all of who WE are is hidden on some tab called "information" like we have become files in a cabinet. Groups that showed what we care about are hidden half-way down this page.
Further, there is no option on the new homepage for a profile to hide or move the wall, where people talk to each other. It's like taking a phone conversation that you didn't mind if a few people overheard, and instead, broadcasting it to the whole shopping mall. Before, to read a wall, you had to scroll down and really care about what you and your friend are talking about, or what your friends are saying to each other. Now, its everyone's business, all the time.
Mark Zuckerberg has sold out to the advertisers. The new ad space is far more prominent, and our space is far less. This leads me to MY SPACE. That's right. 30-somethings will transform MySpace from the current high school playground it is to a mature networking site that respects people's self-expression and doesn't deluge them with advertisements. The 2,000,000 people on Facebook, a sizeable percentage of the total users when you consider the majority are boycotting the ads until facebook, or Mark, decides to actually listen to what these 2,000,000 people WANT. Have you ever heard of a successful politician completely ignoring 2,000,000 people? Oh wait...
Well, back to social networking: successful businessmen don't ignore 2,000,000 people. They listen. Mark Zuckerberg would do well to mature more quickly through his 20's and try doing so.
