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February 26, 2008

Facebook Gets More Orderly: Multi-Tab For Profiles

Michael Arrington

49 comments »

Facebook has always had much cleaner, less chaotic profile pages than “anything goes” competitor MySpace (MySpace continues to experiment with less chaotic default themes). Facebook just seems to like things to stay orderly and structured on their site. But as users add dozens of applications and other content to their profiles, it’s becoming harder for friends to quickly find basic information about you.

They recently allowed users to clean up their own profiles. Today, they’re announcing further changes - a multi-tab profile that separates personal information, wall posts and photos into separate pages.

Screen shots are below. One thing that’s unclear, and that I’m trying to get more information on, is whether wall posts have now been combined with the news feed. The screen shots suggest they have. Also, I’m assuming the tabs are loaded with Javascript, so the pages aren’t refreshing every time a user clicks to a different area of the profile, but I have not confirmed that yet either.

Application developers aren’t going to like the new layout because it looks like they no longer appear on every profile page view - viewers will have to click on a tab to see the user’s installed applications. In a blog post last Friday giving developers a heads up on the upcoming changes, though, this was spun as good news. We’ll see how they react.

This is not being rolled out immediately. Facebook has set up a Facebook Profiles Previews group to track feedback and keep interested users up to date.


  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. bs

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    hopefuly theres one tab for applications so that i can avoid that tab

  2. Gaurav

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    That is a great move….clutter free FB profile!

  3. yeah

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    bs, good call!

  4. Kris

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Not sure this solves much. I can already clean up profile pages by minimizing applications. Any apps I choose to minimize Fbook remembers they were minimized by me, so that anyones profile I go to I can choose to minimize things I don’t want to see.

  5. Ryan

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Looks like an adaptation (in parts) of the mobile (iPhone) UI.

    Nice …

  6. Narendra

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Mike,

    Nice info. This brings into clear relief Facebook’s strong points. It is primarily a photo sharing application and group messaging platform. In fact, the wall is very much like a closed twitter. The about page is the identity piece.

    Apps definitely appear to be marginalized in this design.

  7. Jenkins

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    call it controlled chaos

  8. Mihnea

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Motion seconded, Ryan - they used tabs for the iPhone UI first - which is actually quite something.

    And about the app developers being bothered by this upcoming change - didn’t FB create that ‘extended profile’ option, anyway? It automatically moved all of those corny “I-don’t-feel-like-actually-deleting-all-of-them-one-by-one” apps. They’ve realized that they went too far with these, and are now trying to go back to their older simplicity.

  9. Jugo

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    Narenda: you are out to lunch. flickr is a way better photo sharing application and flickr is a better group messaging app (well it would be if they could keep it running.) Facebook is all about useless applications like virtual gift-giving and super-duper-ficking-retarded-walls.

  10. JasonH

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    I like TechCrunch, but why is this news? “Facebook adds tabs!” Umm, yeah, tabs to organize have been around online since…well, the incarnation of the Internets by A. Gore.

    /sarcasm

    Would have been more interesting had you gone out and actual polled Developers about their reaction and analysis of what it means to them.

  11. Terry Heaton

    February 26th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    So who is Holly Ann?

  12. studs

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

    Mike - do you know which pages the apps go on? It’s kind of unclear from the information that FB posted.

  13. MistOne

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    I think this will be a mixed bag for app dev’s such as myself (well soon to be), a better fb is a better place to be so thats a plus, and we can all agree that there has been a bit of backlash against apps of late (to say the least). On the negative side if apps are hidden they are marginalized and the distribution value fb brings is reduced. what I would like to see is balance, keep improving the U/I by all means, and then roll out additional features, integration points, and distribution channels for apps. balance is good.

  14. Stephen Sclafani

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    @studs

    There will be an option to add additional tabs for favorite applications.

  15. Aidan Henry

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    @ studs - It looks like the Facebook apps will go on the “Wall” page…

    I think that tabs are a good use of space as a way to decrease the profile page length. These additions only take up a small amount of space, but the overall experience and usability of the site are greatly increased.

    I figure people were sick of scrolling and wasting time, so they complained to Facebook. This is the company’s answer/solution.

    Cheers,
    Aidan
    http://www.MappingTheWeb.com

  16. Stephen Sclafani

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    @studs

    As well as on the Wall tab. That bunny on the bottom left is the (fluff)Friends application.

  17. Kevin

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    this seems to be pulling from the iPhone interface, which so many people have raved about. interesting that they are following the success of their own slimmed down mobile approach.

  18. Steven Bao

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    This is actually very good. I’m undecided on the News Feed and the Wall integrated - it could be interesting from a social perspective, but it’s also a strange (and radical) change. At least now, application developers will take much more advantage of the news feed, and the new layout will promote responsible app design, instead of the early days where spam was the key to success.

  19. studs

    February 26th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    Thanks, everybody. Do you know if the tabs will be based on app (SuperWall, FunWall) or company (RockYou, Slide)?

  20. techmine

    February 26th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Very good move. I like organized views. I hope you can set custom privacy for each tab.

  21. MrBuzzSaw

    February 26th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    Keeping it clean and simple. I like.

  22. nemrut

    February 26th, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    I still fail to see the utility of facebook beyond being a huge time sink…

  23. Sajan

    February 26th, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    From the usability point isn’t that too many links on the left and top levels. You can almost click on any text on the top 75px and left 125px. Average internet user may found this whole thing confusing.

  24. Bob

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    Wow! Tabs! Amazing!

    Nothing else in the news…?

  25. Tequila Al

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    I wonder if there’s technical analysis of comments after a TC post. Like a stock chart that shows the history of how a company’s stock reacts after earnings. Seems to me that there is a correlation to TC blog posts. I think the comments after the post might be equal to after hours trading. The sentiment doesn’t seem to be the rocket ride up that is once was for Facebook. The day of the week should be taken into consideration too. I like Sunday evening posts best, they get the most response, especially if they have a little spice in them like Seattle vs. the Valley. Oh well.

  26. Miracle Blade

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    I find the FaceBook interface just as cluttered as MySpace.

  27. lazysupper

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    wow. tabs!
    Hi5 has had tabs since its inception.

    it’s not some disruptive concept… but it’s about time.

  28. James Gillmore

    February 26th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Something tells me that the more features Facebook adds to the site, the less popular it will get.

    I think there is a whole different path Facebook could have been taking. I’m not sure what it is, but, I think the whole minimal thing was their biggest selling point.

    Am I alone with this thought/prediction?

    James
    from
    http://FaceySpacey.com, Your One Stop Social Media Shop

  29. CAR

    February 26th, 2008 at 11:41 pm

    Facebook needs to get into other industries like google. Their one way thinking will make them in they end like sharper image(filed for bankruptcy).

  30. Chris

    February 27th, 2008 at 2:12 am

    Think the interesting thing here is not necessarily in the fact that the tabs have been created (although it is an improvement in tidying up the chaos that is a Facebook profile), but in the fact that this creates space in the proposition to expand out into new areas to allow Facebook to achieve total domination on the web!

    E.g. if Facebook wants to be everybody’s hub and start-point on the web they can now offer a tab that offers a start page type experience to allow people to go further in consolidating all their favorite content, tools and services, and the user can opt to keep it private for their own consumption (e.g. email and other private things), or share elements that they want to (so it would be kind of combining the start page proposition with the consolidated activity feed proposition, a la friendfeed, helping to take on both of these types of competitors). It would kind of be the reverse of what Netvibes is doing with their latest release where they’ve now introduced social networking functionality to their start page proposition. And it would be all about keeping users on Facebook longer, and making it everybody’s first port of call on the web.

    Am sure that there are other areas that they’ve got an eye on by doing this, but I think it’s a smart move both for the good of the current site and in creating the potential to expand out into new areas (and following on from CAR’s comment above I guess one big tab could be ‘SEARCH’, with a nice big search box and results page, to give the Microsoft ads a better home on Facebook, to try and grab a bit of Google’s market share and to really embed web search into the Facebook experience).

    And if diversification is what they’re looking at then as long as it’s designed well - and people can chose how they want to use Facebook without things being forced on them - then I think James Gillmore’s concern (comment above) about dilution/loss of popularity can be side-stepped.

    There, that’s my comment for the day!

  31. Chris

    February 27th, 2008 at 2:13 am

    Oh, and I guess it will also improve performance/load time for users who really load up their Facebook profiles with stuff.

  32. pete

    February 27th, 2008 at 3:36 am

    Free the clutter …

    … so theres more room for advertising

  33. Chris Cardinal

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:09 am

    Michael,

    The caption on the screenshot from the group specifically states that they’re merging the wall and news feed:
    “The new Wall tab displays recent Wall posts as well as recent photos, posted items, updated status messages, and other new content. This makes your friends’ Walls more relevant and more integrated into their profiles.”

  34. Rushabh Choksi

    February 27th, 2008 at 7:27 am

    this is really great!

  35. Rodney Rumford

    February 27th, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Hey Mike,
    What facebook has set up to communicate these changes is NOT a GROUP. It is in fact a PAGE. (where people can become fans)

    A page with no wall for feedback.

    Facebook wante you to email comments to them so that they can track.

    The issue is that they are really using this PAGE as a way to disseminate information and not to collect valuable feedback.

    http://facereviews.com/2008/02.....k-profiles

    cheers!

  36. Nick Wright

    February 27th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    At last- but we did it first,

    http://www.exiva.com
    share your life, treasure the privacy

  37. BuildAGadget

    February 27th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    It seems like an interesting way to organize the content. It makes sense to run most of your interactive content first, then allow a person to get info about a person in the next tab. With any luck, this might cut down on some of the app spam, but where there’s a system, there will always be someone there to abuse it.

    Yeah, it does seem like the wall has been rolled up into the news feed. Be pretty nice as long as they have some sorting options at some point. We’ll be interested in seeing how the profiles handle newer apps on the wall tab if they allow narrow only or if wide will still be there (probably, but you never know).

    Application tabs however are going to be the first thing abused by spammers. Guaranteed.

  38. Art Geigel

    February 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Regarding “Also, I’m assuming the tabs are loaded with Javascript, so the pages aren’t refreshing every time a user clicks to a different area of the profile…”

    If Facebook’s current use of AJAX is any indication of continued trends for the website we can safely assume that each time a person clicks a tab that a check at the server is performed to see if any new content has been updated for that tab. If there is new content for that tab then Facebook can stream back the HTML for that tab and update it a la appearing client side with no post-backs and page refreshes.

    Facebook is infinitely cleaner than MySpace, however I am really beginning to hate all the requests from applications… and until now I don’t know how to avoid all those requests.

    - AG

  39. Anonymous

    March 24th, 2008 at 6:43 am

    I passionately HATE this new layout!!!! It is SO ugly!!!!!!!

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