Website Reformatting

Whenever facebook.com releases updates/changes to the layout, everyone reacts with "I hate new facebook" and "bring back the old format!". Over time I have gotten used the new formats, the most current one still confuses me when I want to find photo albums. Hopefully, the site doesn't get another makeover for at least a few months so that I can get the hang of things again.

Around the time of the latest facebook upgrade, twitter decided to reformat. There was an option to revert to old twitter, which I have been using religiously up until two days ago. I accidentally hit "see new twitter" and now when I try to "return to old twitter" the site refuses to load. Guess, I don't have a choice anymore and I need to get with the times.

I accept that social networking sites will revamp every now and again. What I wasn't prepared for was Gawker, Jezebel, Lifehacker, and the like to go from familiar and easy to busy, complicated, and unfriendly. The new site was released earlier this week, maybe Tuesday, and as soon as the page loaded I immediately checked to make sure I entered the correct web address. After confirming that I didn't load jezebell.com I attempted to scroll through the posts, got overwhelmed and immediately left. I wasn't sure if I should have been scrolling through the main section or whatever that is on the right.

Today, I returned to give the site the old college try. I was able to find a post I wanted to read, but then I went to read the comments at the bottom. WTF. Could not for the life of me understand what was happening down there. Comments are my favorite part! Realistically if the article is long but the headline is catchy, I have a tendency to skip down to see what the people are talking about. Sadly, it is as if these designers hate the comment section (and their readers) - these sites are just hot messes.

Normally, I get annoyed at revamped sites purely because my habits have to change. The facebook and twitter updates don't make it harder to read/update, they just make me look in a new spot. The Gawker/Jezebel/etc sites are actually giving me a headache. Too much in too little of a space. Please designers, think about doing some revisions.