Facebook’s changes have become routine in the last few months. Every time I log in, some feature has been updated. It gets a little hard to keep everything straight, especially for a technophobe such as myself.
Things are about to get worse. Facebook recently unveiled a completely new format. Dubbed the “Facebook Timeline,” it is a veritable scrapbook, detailing each user’s social networking history. I’ve given the new Facebook Timeline a test run. So far, I don’t like what I see. Here are just a few reasons:
Unfriended
While the old format allowed users sever online ties with some level of anonymity, this is no longer possible. With the new Facebook Timeline, it is ridiculously easy for users to see just who has deleted them over the years. The last thing I want to see is how many people have ditched me as a “friend.” And I don’t really want others to know if I’ve done the same for them.
MySpace Wannabe
The main reason I left MySpace was that the site became cluttered and hard to navigate. With its plain white background, Facebook provided a refreshing alternative. Over the years, the site has strayed further and further from this level of simplicity. The Facebook Timeline interface has pictures and wall posts and new friends all over the place, taking the concept of the messy social network to a whole new level.
Embarrassing Wall Posts
In the early days of Facebook, most users weren’t all that concerned with privacy. This was before employers, professors and grandmothers searched out your profile to find incriminating evidence. The new Facebook Timeline puts all those drunken pictures and crude inside jokes on display. Yes, there will be ways to make these things private, but it is a lot harder to control what others can and cannot see on Facebook Timeline.
Users have never welcomed new Facebook features. If this is like the other makeovers, people will probably grumble for a while and then get used to it. For some though, Facebook Timeline may be the last straw. Some of us truly miss the old simplistic layout. And we just might start flocking over to Google Plus, just as we left for Facebook when Myspace got too messy.
To learn more about social networking, see 5 Celebrities Not on Facebook and The Pros and Cons of Using Facebook.