Facebook Redesign 101

Facebook’s redesign has officially launched and by now everyone should be seeing the changes to their pages when they log in. I’ve received calls and emails from clients and friends asking where this-or-that is now and thought it would be nice to map it all out here.

An overview

Don’t panic. What you had before is still there, they’ve just moved things around a bit in a move to create a more efficient workspace with more of what you use available at your fingertips.

When you first opened Facebook after the redesign, you probably got a notification like the one above, letting you know where the most-used features, like notifications for new friend requests or messages, had been moved to. (Top, left, by the way)

Other common actions in Facebook, such as checking events, applications, favorite pages, etc have all been grouped together also on the left side of the page. In fact, almost everything you most likely ever used is now on the left side.

The TOP THREE things everyone wants to see in Facebook – Friend requests, messages and new notifications, are now also available via cute tiny little icons in the top, left corner. See the images right next to the word “Facebook?” Click on these and it will take you directly to one of the three. There are even helpful little popups in eye-catching red that tell you if you have new requests, messages or notifications to check.

What am I looking at?

When you first go to Facebook, the new default view is the News Feed. You also get this view by clicking on “Home” on the top, right. No more confusion about “live feed” vs “news feed.” Now you can select between Top News or Most Recent, a much more intuitive choice.

This isn’t like your old Wall view, though. To see your Wall, you need to click on “Profile” in the top, right of the window. Now you’ve got the familiar view where the Wall, Info, Photos, etc tabs are across the top to choose from.

Chatting

If you loved to instant chat with fellow Facebook users, this has been made much easier to access. First, you can see a visual column of friends currently online FB in the left side of your FB window. Click on their name (or picture) and a chat window immediately opens in the lower, right corner. 

More to come…

In future posts, we’ll discuss privacy settings and other changes to Facebook, as well as continue to delve into how to make Facebook easier to use and a more efficient business tool.