The Lowdown on Facebook’s New Redesign

Facebook rolled out a new redesign to 80 million out of 400 million users this last Thursday night, February 4, 2010. It was a limited rollout because the company wants to make sure the site’s stable before they release it to everyone.

The redesign looks like a nice improvement in usability. The changes seem to surround search, the inbox, responding to notifications, and status updates.

Here are some of the changes I’ve noticed:

1. They’ve made search more prominent. When you type in names, it auto-completes for people who are the closest to you by social proximity — e.g. the people you share the most mutual friends with. Not only that, it indexes content two degrees out in your social graph. Moving the search box is a very smart move as the company looks to make search a core experience, like it is currently with Twitter.
2. The features like the message, notifications, and friend request at the top left make it a great way to get an overview at a glance.
3. The left-hand navigation bar of the social network site has been improved with a new dashboard for applications and games.
4. The news feed has been renamed ‘Top News,’ while the live feed has been named ‘Most Recent’ to make it clearer to users.
5. Facebook’s buddy list for chat has moved to the left-hand side of the page. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to optimize chat more so that people would feel like they’re using the site in real-time together with their friends. Chat is now a lot more accessible with people that you’re most likely to communicate with on the left-hand side.
6. There will not be changes to Facebook fan pages.

Here is a great video overview of the redesign.

To learn more about the new design, check out the site tour.

What are your thoughts on the new Facebook layout? Will you change your social media strategy?