No Parent Left Behind

Executive Summary: New Facebook interface, March 18th 2009

So you may be new to Facebook.  You may have just gotten used to the nice clean interface… now you’re in for a change.  Yes, change can be hard.  Sorry.

We just finished up a full length tutorial on the old interface… I guess we won’t be posting that one huh?! Well, it looks like we are both in need of some help.  So lets explore this new interface together.  Here we go.

Basically you have 3 important things that come up now:

1. Your “stream” of status updates of your freinds and groups that you’ve joined. (think real-time update).
2. Your “highlight” off to the right (these show a slower style picture of what is going on with your friends).
3. Your filters for filtering your stream by groups of people.

They also changed the status wording to “what’s on your mind?” limit of 160 characters.

Everything else is close to the same.  You have a nice inbox for direct messages (email style), your little list of applications, your photo albums, profile pictures, etc.

We’ll try to get a new tutorial out to help you out soon!  Until then, if you’d like you can always sign the facebook petition to bring the old interface back.  (how’s that for grassroots huh?)

Last links:

Facebook’s official “tour” page.  Short and sweet guide to the new interface: http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage_tour.php

Good overview of the new features, with screenshots can be found here. http://smt-info.com/facebook-has-new-look.html

In-depth article about why Facebook changed it’s look, a comparison to Twitter too: http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3874404

Good little video tutorial of the new facebook interface. http://www.butterscotch.com/video-tutorials.html?s=breakingnews&e=13

The “bring back the old interface” petition” http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56090098182&ref=nf