New Facebook Layout Is Smart

In case you haven't seen it, there is a new layout for Facebook coming out soon. You can preview it at www.new.facebook.com. A lot of people are going to hate it when it first comes out. It is inevitable that there will be hundreds of groups protesting its existence, congregating together to shut it down ... on the network itself. But I, on the other hand, think that the new layout is great!

Here is why:

1. It's shifts Facebook from a directory of profiles to an interactive hub for social communication. This is done through an emphasis on feeds by placing them on both the front of the home page and the profile page. While this might be new to some, it is the current trend in the web 2.0 space with life stream services like www.friendfeed.com that aggregate a user's data from different web services into a single website.

2. Better utilization of space. Most of the boxes are bigger because they freed up space on the left and the right. That means that on the same real estate we can see a much clearer update from each user. And if you notice carefully, they've even taken out ads on the front page (update: except the sponsored posts inside the main feed), but upgraded the ads to the top of the profile page on the right hand side. Since I'm more entrepreneur than Facebook user, this is exciting news because it means that my ads will get better exposure per $ and higher click-through rates.

3. They moved annoying applications out of the main profile page. This gives a chance for those users that like to use applications to still use them, yet allowing those without the need to be constantly bombarded by annoying boxes to avoid them. Excellent decision.