Facebook gets it wrong, again. Communication is key.
Image from Laughing Squid on Flickr
Are you missing the New Facebook? Wondering what all the fuss is about? Wondering why you don’t have it and some of your friends do? Annoyed your friends are all talking about how much they love and/or hate it and you can’t even see it? You’re not alone.
Facebook has done what is known as a blind staggered rollout deployment, so some people randomly get the new version before other people. Most blind rollouts are not based on what users want or who they are, but on things like dataset size or database location of dataset.
It’s not you, it’s Facebook. Yes, you’ll get the new one soon and yes, some of it looks a bit like Twitter, no it’s still not as good as Twitter.
It’s good IT manners to notify your application/service users of the following when planning a deployment:
Deployment Manners 101
Who
- Who will be impacted?
- Who will not be impacted?
What
- What’s going to happen?
- Will functions change or move or look different?
Where
- Where are the changes documented for users to view in advance?
- Where are these impacted users located (ie. desk, floor, building, state, country, etc)?
- Where is the roadmap for future changes?
How
- How will this deployment happen?
- How will the users experience it?
- How do users get help if they need it?
- How will users be impacted?
- How will I know who has the new deployment and who hasn’t?
- How should large user groups plan important events during this deployment period?
- How can I be more involved before the next deployment, so I can ensure my views are included during planning?
Why
- Why is this deployment happening?
- Why can’t everything stay the way it is now?
- Why is the new stuff better than the old stuff?
- Why was some of the old stuff better than the new stuff is going to be? (there are always flaws or downgraded features, don’t pretend there aren’t, it makes people hate you)
- Why didn’t you ask me about this before you did it?
- Why can’t you put it back the way I liked it before?
Need some help with the new-new-new-bloody-stop-it-Facebook?
The official Facebook Tour: New Facebook Home Page
The crappy Facebook announcement Welcome to your New Home Page
Laurel Papworth has created this to help you out New Facebook Features: Filter Stream Publisher.
"I Want To Be a Celebrity"
Buy at 
Argh…. and it’s messed up the Facebook iPhone app too now that they’ve got rid of the “status updates” view.
This sort of thing often happens when something hits the big time and has to transition from being coded in someone’s bedroom to being a professional outfit, but come on facebook, you should have the experience by now.
Thanks for the heads up about the app Tom.
Cait - seriously saw it in the feeds and went meh… Facebook really is a closed social network that is so insular that it doesn’t interest me that much. Great post though - liked it!
What I have noticed is that a particular friend demographic of mine love the platform and I make it mainly for them. You lot get me across everything
Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook, it’s just a platform with a lot of wasted potential.
I only joined Facebook because some people at work whined and whined until I joined and then a couple months later they gave up on it. I’m still on Facebook, but the only real information I gave them was my name…
The “new” Facebook doesn’t really affect me because frankly, I could care less about Facebook. It’s only about 1 step away from being MySpace.