You know…Facebook is a privately owned business, providing a service for free to those of us who wants to stay in touch with friends and relatives. And yet, they are probably the most criticized place on the web today. We are just never happy, are we?

Whenever there’s changes happening on Facebook, we scream. Even when the changes are for the better, there’s nothing that generates more articles, discussions and analysis among those of us who been around both their community and the rest of the web for a while. We automatically assume that because we are a part of building their community, we also have the right to be a part of their decisions. And yes, in a way we do. From a business point of view, it’s not really any of our concern what they do with their assets. We are all free to leave them behind for something else if we wanted to, so no one is forced to stick around and hate the changes they do.

That said, the past couple of weeks have been a bit of a horror on Facebook. From personal experience I know and I’m very aware that making any changes to a big community is technically demanding and takes time. It will also mean that nothing works the way it should.
I’m also pretty sure that there are legal reasons why they can’t take the entire place down for a short amount of time while making their changes. I mean other than 400 million members that would be furious :p

And every time they make changes in the layout to make it more user-friendly, we all hate it. Well, almost everyone anyway. Change the way things work and force your members to learn a new “pattern”  to find things is a 100% secure way to end up in the 10 Most Hated Places Ever. And most likely in the top 3.
Personally I don’t really have a problem to learn a new layout and maybe that’s a professional injury more than a positive thing. But it’s a lot more pleasant to explore a new layout when everything is functional. There’s something annoying about dead links in a community with 400 million members and 6 years of presence on the web. Even the same day they switch to a new layout it should work.

It also annoy me a little that they keep pointing out that the new layout should be “easier” to use. At least in theory it should be easier to find things. What I would want is a more dynamic place where I can put my own bookmarks, links, notifications, inbox, friends, news feeds, updates that are important to me where I want them. They do have a certain flexibility in their layout where you can change the sort order in the menu and so on, but I would want to build my own layout. Decide what I want to see on my Home page.

Now, I’m not saying that I want another MySpace…heaven forbid that. What I like about Facebook is that there is no possibility to clutter it with blinking background images, animations, sound and the entire wardrobe from Little Shop of Horrors. That is something I’m very happy without.
But it would still be nice to be able to place existing modules wherever I want them to be.
And maybe next time they realize that the best way to make it easier for all of us to find what we need is to allow us to plug it in where we want it. Not where they think it should be.

End of rant :)