Did you know that they've changed the Facebook? If you visit the site, http://www.facebook.com, it is no longer the Facebook you fell in love with. Don't get me wrong, I still love the entity that is the Facebook, but the changes are not user friendly, and in short, are killing the love. I am truly a Facebook nerd and I am not against change in itself, but I am against change that does not improve. Rather than adding a fresh coat of paint to improve the ease and pleasure of using the Facebook, the Facebook designers have put a rusty car with no tires in the front yard.

There is a saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Admittedly, some of my friends complained that they were getting a bit bored with Facebook at the end of last semester, but I never shared their opinion. I can say that the way for the Facebook to gain back its fans is not to mess up things more.

In the former version, finding someone's profile was as simple as entering the person's name or Andrew ID in the search bar and clicking Enter. But when the Facebook redesign first came out, when you entered in any word, name, school, hobby, etc., and pressed enter, do you know what happened? Nothing. When I failed to find any results during a search, I thought I was at fault. Perhaps I had misspelled my friends' names. I have been known to be wrong in my spelling before, so I cut and pasted their names from their personal web sites. Still, nothing came up. I like to be thorough and not jump to conclusions, so I did one more search using the name of a friend who I knew for certain had a page on the Facebook. No success. The system just didn't work.

The defective search feature has been fixed as of late, so my two main problems with the new Facebook are the excessive scrolling required and its new appearance:

1)      Excessive scrolling: Excessive scrolling is required when attempting to send messages. Need I say more? I thought only Carnegie Mellon could complicate a simple activity like sending a message, but last time I checked, Carnegie Mellon was not running the Facebook. I am having Mulberry flashbacks while trying to message my friends. Rather than seeing your previous messages in the order they were sent, it is just the opposite now. The return message box is at the top and you have to scroll down to see your previous messages. I realize this is what happens when you return an e-mail, but if I wanted to send an e-mail, I would.

2)      Sterile Appearance:  Formerly resembling a friend's scrapbook, the Facebook presently resembles a cheesy Internet dating site designed specifically for people who have dated computers. Apparently, the current webmaster at the Facebook has not taken a course in Web Design Style and it shows.  There is no relevant flow of information and the new design hurts, physically, to look at. My eyes protest the scattered appearance of elements on the page. Previously, any related chunks of information were boxed together, but the boxes were removed and the information was put into two columns that seem to float in nothingness. This creates serious display problems because if you use Explorer to look at Facebook, the columns quite literally float downwards, leaving blank space at the top of your screen and requiring you to scroll down to see any information on the middle and right side of the screen.

But the most shocking development in all this is the fact that "Facebook High School Edition" has just been launched. Could it be that the high school kids are getting our old (i.e., better) version of Facebook? Are these changes an attempt to visually separate the Facebook from the Facebook High School Edition? If the latter is true, what is the point of separating them since the two versions cannot interact anyway? This development is strange and intriguing, to say the least.

If I am out of line, please feel free to correct me. Of course, I will require flow charts, demonstrations, and extensive explanations to be proven wrong, but you are free to try if you are willing to put the effort in. And just for the record, I am not alone in my griping. For those who need statistics as proof, 50 percent of my friends are dissatisfied with the new Facebook for one reason or another. Of course, that 50 percent is 100 percent of my friends who use Facebook, as the other half do not want to be confused with Facebook users.

I have reunited with and met some awesome people through Facebook and I would like others to experience this. But will they continue to flock to use something that is unusable? Will people be attracted its new, nerdy, cluttered appearance? I think the answer could very well be "no."

 talkback to the pulse