Please excuse the dreadful pun but it does reveal some truth. Facebook the worlds most popular social networking site with over 400 million users has begun rolling out a new version of it’s homepage to users since Thursday. The redesign was passed on to the first group of 80 million Facebook users on the 4th February, which was Facebooks 6th Birthday. The main goal of this update is to make it easier for users to access their favorite features without having to jump from pages to pages.
A guide to Facebook's new home page (Credit: Facebook)
The top menu of Facebook now makes it easier for users to see requests and notifications which you used to have to go digging through menus in the past to find. The icons now turn into convenient red bubbles to alert you whenever you have a notification, otherwise they remain as faded icons.
The middle search field is now also greatly improved. Type the name of a friend, for example, and you’ll find recent posts, photos, and other content for that person. Type the name of a subject, such as Haiti earthquake, and you’ll also find groups and pages devoted to that cause. On the left hand side of your homepage online chat contacts are displayed as well as games and your bookmarked applications.
But there’s more, Facebook are also reportedly working on their own webmail service which is said to rival the likes of Gmail and Hotmail. It’s known internally as Project Titan, and would see users rid of the rather bloated Facebook messaging service that’s currently available, and replace it with a full featured webmail service.
It’s is expected to include full search features and include the ability to import other email accounts into it. And according to other reports, Facebook are looking to take on full POP/IMAP support, meaning you’ll be able to access your account on your phone or through a service like Outlook Express or Entourage.
It sounds like it will attempt to take a direct hit at the likes of Gmail and Hotmail, and reports suggest that email accounts will be username@facebook.com. We are yet to hear of a date when this will be introduced.
We’ve also been told that the Facebook image uploader tool will be revamped as well.
The prototype image uploader was first announced in November of last year but Facebook are now saying that it’s on its way to users soon.
Unlike the current version of Facebook’s photo uploader, the new uploader requires the installation of a browser plug-in. However users can now leave Facebook while their photos continue to upload in the background. Currently you have to leave a window opening when uploading photos to Facebook.
They have also announced that more file formats will be supported, while we’ve yet to receive an official list, we know that .jpg, .gif, .bmp, and .png files will work.
Facebook currently gets 2.5 billion photo uploads per month. To put that in perspective, the company hit the 10 billion mark in October of 2008, three years after first introducing the photo-sharing feature in 2005. So it seems that Facebook photo sharing features seem to be very popular, and no doubt this update will make it easier and more convenient for users to upload photos.
And if you want to try out this new feature for yourself before it’s officially introduced, you can turn it on at Facebook’s prototype page.
So what do you think of these new Facebook updates? Are you finding Facebook easier to use now, or are you completely lost now when you log onto your Facebook homepage?
What do you think of a new webmail service from Facebook? Would you use it?
Let us know in the comments.
