Thoughts on the new Facebook homepage

Facebook released a new version of the homepage.

My two initial reactions are:

• It's going to stink for apps.
  
• Facebook is killing its own page views

It turns out that I was right about #1. Our apps have seen about 50% less traffic than after the homepage redesign.

I am still undecided about #2. From my personal experience I find myself doing fewer pageviews for the simple reason that all the interesting and good information is... hidden. Well, I know HOW to access it but it's not right in from of me.

Two examples,

I still don't know HOW to access tagged photos of friends from the Photos application. This one I'll need help with.
Easy links to the 'Events' application are nowhere to be found.

As a facebook user, tagged photos and Events are probably 2 out of the Top 5 things I look at the most and I find that in general facebook is harder to mine the data I want to get out of it... what are my friends doing. Facebook seems to have increased the noise for me with the redesign.

Also, Facebook made their own ads smaller and less intrusive, which I found as quite the surprise.

On a positive note I hear Facebook streamlined the mini-feed to be a more accurate representation of the main news feed stories. Meaning that if a story doesn't appear in the mini-feed it won't appear in your friends homepages. The change is a welcome one compared to the mini-feed/main feed ambiguity that preceded it.