Ever noticed how the remote for each new TV you check out seems to
have more and more buttons? Or how that online game you used to enjoy is
feeling less like fun as the options pile on? It’s not your fault. It’s
a well-documented phenomenon, found in hardware, in software and on the
Web: feature creep.
Engineers, bless their hearts, want to give us access to all the
exciting new functions they’ve come up with. But they’re not great at
making them simple enough for the average user, or at removing the
buttons we no longer need. When a company does have the courage and
discipline to slash away at its engineers’ wish lists, and adhere to the
KISS principle of design (Keep It Simple, Stupid), it can rise head and shoulders above its rivals and delight its users. Apple is a great example of that, as is Nintendo (the Wii being one of the most simple — and successful — game console designs of all time.)
Unfortunately for its 800 million users, Facebook
does not appear to be that kind of company. It used to be, and its
inherent simplicity was part of the reason it was so successful. But now
it is falling victim to feature creep — and a roster of settings that
are becoming increasingly complex.
Take the Ticker,
for example, that real-time stream of information which now crowds the
right-side of your Facebook page with a lot of distracting noise. Or
look at the Like button, which recently celebrated its first birthday.
That was a very popular all-purpose tool that spread rapidly across the
Web. Everyone knows what it means to Like something. But Facebook
couldn’t leave well enough alone.
At this year’s f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Gestures,
which will allow you to [any verb] a [any noun]. As Zuckerberg pointed
out, this will allow you to “read” a book or “hike” a trail rather than
like it. That’s great if you like a lot of granularity in your News
feed, but I fear that for the vast majority of us it means more
confusion, more noise, and the decline of the social network’s single
most iconic feature.
Once upon a time, you just friended people; now you have to decide if you want to subscribe to their feed instead. A profile used to be a profile, plain and simple; now it can also be a Page (and converting one to the other can open up a world of pain). And let’s not even get into the debate over Timeline,
the radical redesign of the user profile, which will start rolling out
to all users in the next week or so and eventually be required for all
of us. Got your all-important top-of-the-page picture picked out yet?
Booked the hours that it’s going to take to fill in the story of your
life, all the way back to birth? (The vast majority of respondents in our poll said filling in their Timeline gaps would take too much time and effort.)
The Other 792 Million
The New Facebook Profile: Timeline
Timeline is a radical departure from previous versions of the Facebook user profile. The most prominent feature is the addition of a cover photo at the top of the page. Users can change this to whatever they'd like it to be.
1987
In 1987, my sister was born. Facebook knows these life events and includes them in your timeline.
Being Born
You can even add a picture and context to your birth, which starts the Timeline.
Timeline Interface
The Timeline is a two-column interface with top photos, status updates, friends and more.
Map
Facebook has added a feature that lets you see where you have visited. This is powered by Facebook Places.
Photos in the Timeline
Here's how photos are displayed in the Timeline.
Friends in the New Timeline
Here's what the Friends page looks like.
Changing Settings
Some of the new Timeline's customization features.
2009
More of the new Timeline
Getting Married
You can add life events, such as getting married, to your
profile through the Publisher Bar. You can also announce that you broke
a bone, got a new job, etc.
Chances are, as a Mashable reader, you’re on top of some of this stuff. Maybe you’ve even gone through the complex steps required to activate your Timeline
ahead of time. Great; that puts you in the top 1% of Facebook users:
the early adopters, the people who get excited about change rather than
fear it. But spare a thought for the other 792 million users, most of
whom don’t even know these changes are coming. There are millions of
people who think the Ticker is the new Facebook. They’re in for a nasty surprise.
Even for those at the top of the pile, the complexities are growing.
Many friends who cover Facebook for a living have their pet peeves about
the site and the increasing number of roadblocks it throws in the path
to doing something that should be very easy. Take Lists, for example.
Facebook used to treat Lists as a way to prevent certain people from
seeing certain information; you could exclude your boss and your parents
from seeing all those girls’ night out pictures you were tagged in,
say.
But now Facebook has changed its mind and decided that Lists are more like Circles on Google+ — ways to share with specific groups of friends rather than block
specific groups of friends. In other words, there are now two kinds of
Lists. It is possible to merge your old Lists together, but we’ve heard
from users that this blasts your privacy settings. And who has the time
to sort out this stuff? It’s getting so that managing your social
network, and making sure nothing embarrassing slips out, is a full-time
occupation in itself.
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