It's Not Just Black and White

Change Is GOOD!

For their sixth birthday Facebook launched a new look to their website. The new look rolled out over a period of a week and Facebook uses slowly were able begin to use the new site. As new users began to use the new site, the status messages started showing frustration and groups such as BRING BACK THE OLD FACEBOOK started forming, again. Deja Vu?

Every time Facebook rolls out a new look, people get upset, frustrated, and form groups. I don’t understand it. Very few websites remain exactly the same over a period of six years. When it comes to websites and design, change is usually good. Think about it. If we kept websites the same for years and years on end, we would still have our sites in tables with the pipe border around each table with each cell being a different color. I bet Facebook would look great with the old table look, circa 1997.

Change is generally good. Most websites such as Facebook are making changes behind our backs every day. They are upgrading server functionality, they’re changing code to make the site run just a little bit faster, and they continue to build upon the pieces of the site that are already in place. People never complain about the site moving faster do they? By creating the new layout, Facebook is actually making it easier to navigate in the long run. It now only takes one click once you’re logged in to see your friends profile updates. Before, it was two. Ideally we’d all become accustomed to the new design over night, but it takes a  little bit of time and eventually we realize that Facebook just made it easier for us!

Facebook has taken a great approach to the design change. Looking over Facebook’s archive of designs, you will see the color scheme has always stayed the same, the homepage has had two major overhauls in terms of layout, and the inside of the website generally matched the header and footer of the outside. They’re staying consistent. It would be a major problem if every time they did the redesign the navigation moved, the colors changed, and the functionality changed. Facebook slowly rolls out new functionality and eases us into the change. They didn’t go from the 2004 look to 2010 look over night.

Think of it as the evolution of the Pepsi Logo. In the 1970’s the Pepsi logo was sharp and fit with the times. Forty years later the logo still has the circle and says their name, it just moved with the times. Like Pepsi, Facebook hasn’t changed its overall brand with the new design, they’ve upgrade it to move with the times. Very few companies can get away without change. It’s a part of life and over time the new Facebook layout will be appreciated. For now, click through it and stop complaining. It’s not that hard to learn!

It’s a debate I’ve heard way too often lately: “Which is better? Facebook? Twitter? None of the Above?” Facebook has been around longer than Twitter, but does that mean it’s any better or worse than Twitter? For me, at the end of the day, Twitter and Facebook serve two very different purposes.

Facebook came about my freshman year of college. Like most of my school, I spent my spring break basking in the excitement that our school finally had the privileged of being on Facebook. (It was February, in the midwest, and it was snowing… yes I spent it on a computer). I friended people I hardly knew, but that didn’t matter. My classmates and I spent our days seeing who could get more friends, meeting new people, and exchanging homework information. With college in the past, Facebook has been the place for me to keep up with my friends from college, family, and friends from high school. I haven’t used it too much for networking outside of that. For the most part, it’s been about keeping in touch. When I’m frustrated, my Facebook status will show that.

Twitter on the other hand is all about meeting new people and learning new things. With a new found love for social media as a marketing tool over the last five or six months, I wanted to learn everything there was to know about it. Google got me some articles, but never the in-depth conversation I was looking for. Enter Twitter. Twitter gave me exactly what I needed to interact with people who have the same interests as me. I found article after article on social media and search engine optimization. It was the outlet I was looking for to learn from.

I still will use Facebook from time to time for non-personal things and I will use Twitter to post quotes, love songs, etc when I’m in that kind of a mood. But overall the two websites serve two very different purposes for me.

How do you use Twitter and Facebook?

Screen Cap From Twitter - 7:30 PM - October 21, 2009

On October 15th , the US watched as a family feared that one of their own was “floating above Colorado”, as they believed their youngest boy had untied a UFO type balloon and was inside it as it floated away.  The story was more than one trending topic on twitter and was on all of the news stations. There was even a boyintheballoon twitter account was created before the balloon landed. Yet it was still hard to believe that this young boy was floating above Colorado.

People were right not to believe. By that night, the young boy had spilled the beans on Larry King Live that it was all for show. Within four days CNN broke the news that the authorities had reason to believe the incident was a hoax. Yet, a week later, Balloon Boy is still a trending topic on Twitter, is still in the news, and is the background of so many jokes that are out there.

Thanks to social media the Henne family got what they were looking for, attention. As a former reality TV family from Wife Swap, the Henne family was looking for another reality show. Was this the kind of reality show they wanted? In the past week they’ve been on a variety of TV shows, had plenty of national coverage, and have been one of the major topics in social media. You can’t really ask for more attention than that.

The exact details of what happened that day are known only by the members of the Henne family, and we may never know the full truth of what happened. Yet, do we even care? Using the tools that are at our fingertips daily, people around the country were able to come to their own conclusions of what happened and share them with thousands of people. The Henne family definitely got America’s attention.

So why are we continuing to talk about it almost a week later? Why am I writing this blog about it? Because it’s fascinating how a story out of a town in Colorado can spread across the country within minutes. Speculation beginning immediately after the story broke. When Michael Jackson passed away in June, it was a trending topic on Twitter for weeks. In fact a good portion of people found out on Twitter or Facebook. The day before that no one said much about Michael Jackson. Imagine what would have happened if we had Twitter during the OJ Simpson trial.

Hanging Out With My Family

Facebook was originally created by Mark Zuckerberg as a way to keep in touch with his college friends, obviously it has expanded to more than that. This past year I have been able to use it for both the social media aspect of life as well as the personal aspect Mark originally created it for.

My family has been through a lot in the last year. We lost my grandfather and a cousin within 3 months of each other and we’re dealing with it from multiple different states. A family whose really kept together through email on and off over the years, we found another way of bringing it even closer, Facebook.

All of us cousins and I vary in age and from time to time have always gotten back together, had a good time, and gone on our way. After everything our family went through this past year, we turned to each other using the social network, Facebook, to keep in touch and encourage each other through various times. One of my cousins (technically a third cousin) and I really kept in touch and it became at least a weekly, if not daily, communication tool for us. We are 5 years apart in age and growing up only saw each other on a few occasions despite being from the same hometown.

Over the last 10 months we’ve mainly communicated through Facebook, but we realized we hadn’t seen eachother in three years, since her wedding. I finally decided it was time to travel down south getting to know her, her husband, and her 18 month old boy. Running around, singing multiple different Elmo songs, and playing in firetrucks, I had a chance to get to know a part of my family I barely would have known without the chance we had to re-connect on Facebook.

While Facebook is an amazing tool for businesses, playing games, and posting pictures… The best thing it gave me was a chance to go back to it’s roots, connecting with family and friends.