Facebook's Facelift

The social-networking site started rolling out its new look this week. According to Facebook, all users will be upgraded during the next few days.

The philosophy of Facebook has not changed. It still functions to create communities of friends or of people with similar tastes. The new design does evoke Twitter a bit, with its emphasis on members' status updates.

One big change is on the home page. The filtering mechanism is improved so users with tons of "friends" can easily maneuver through updates. For example, it's now possible to see just the updates from people in your networks. And users can organize their lists of friends. That's particularly handy for those who may have accepted a "friend request" from a colleague or client with whom they have fallen out of touch. The stream can be filtered, for example, to only show updates about current clients or family members.

Another major change will be the inclusion of new profiles for public figures and organizations. Formerly, those were referred to as "Pages." The new profiles will now look and function in a similar manner to users' profiles. They can share status updates, videos, photos, etc. The News Feed pages will still aggregate all status updates.

So, even with its new look and features, Facebook really isn't taking Twitter head-on. The whole idea of befriending is reciprocal: 'I am only your friend if you accept me.' Twitter allows anyone to follow anybody. What this redesign has done is to put the friend stream front and center, and to make the overall site a bit more intuitive.