Facebook Gets More Orderly: Multi-Tab For Profiles

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.