The Redesign Nobody Wanted

Facebook rolled out a new interface, which means half the platform is writing furious messages about it and the other half is pretending not to notice. It happened with MySpace, it happened with Last.fm, and now it’s Facebook’s turn to discover that users take their layouts personally—more personally, honestly, than most things that actually matter.

I don’t hate it. The information’s still there. The bones are cleaner. But there’s something mildly alienating about logging in and finding the furniture rearranged, especially on a site you navigate mostly on muscle memory. You click where the thing used to be, find nothing, feel briefly stupid, adapt. The cycle is so predictable at this point it’s almost comforting.