I was pretty excited to finally see the newest Facebook layout appear on my homepage this afternoon. Here’s a step by step of how it went for me.
Minute 1: “Hooray, it’s here!”
Emphasized search, specific dashboards, categorized sections – so far so good. But wait, what’s this? I can’t set my news feed to “Status Updates” anymore. That’s unfortunate. 
Minute 2: “I sure hope there’s a better way to do this.”
As the status update viewing option is gone, I clicked the “Most Recent” news feed, and realized that I’ll now have to manually hide all the application updates. It’s not such a problem during the day, but somewhere around 8 p.m. they get so popular, I can’t see anyone’s personal updates.
Minute 5: “No one’s posted anything in that last 5 minutes? That’s really strange.”
About this time, I notice my typically constantly-updating news feed is stagnant. I’m a little disappointed that I now have to refresh the page instead of just leaving the window open. It’s not too big of a deal, but why the change?
Minute 6: “Wait… I’m being ambushed!”
I refresh the screen to see I have 2 event invitations that have come through in the last 5 minutes. Ahh, that’s more like it. But then I realize I’m still looking at them on the right side of the screen. I could have sworn they were on the left side now. So I look, and there they are… again. I think, “Maybe the one on the left is for events I’m actually attending,” but then I look back to my right, and there are events for a third time! Then, I notice chat is on both the bottom and on the left.
I am now thinking the new Facebook is quite redundant.
Minute 10: “Now this I’m going to like.”
A few more refreshes, and I have messages. I click the little icon and instead of taking me to a new screen, the messages pop down. I’m a big fan of this new feature.
Minute 15: “It really seems like more people play Farmville than that.”
After a couple more minutes of making sure the new search bar didn’t change the search and that the Social Media Solutions LLC Page was still fully functional (both work just the same), I decided to check out the new games dashboard I’ve heard so much about. Your games are now organized by the ones you play, the ones your friends have recently played, and the ones your specific friends are playing.
Overall: The look is a little different. Things have moved sideways or up or have doubled themselves. Some minor features are gone while others have debuted. But overall, it’s really not that different. Remember when news feed first became available? Now that was a big deal.