What You Need to Know About Facebook's Facelift

The blogosphere reacted with a  predictable rush of excitement Sunday night after CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes" to walk Leslie Stahl through a redesign of the service's user profile pages

For once, though, the predictable hyperventilation may be justified. Although these sorts of changes typically take weeks, if not months, to resonate with users - assuming that they work - the latest tweaks go quite a way toward playing up the personality of the individual user profile - and that's likely to strike a responsive chord with many denizens of our  (increasingly) me-centered social networked universe. Of particular note:

• Lots of photos and they're bigger than ever before.

• Relationships with lists of family and friends that you can select get played up. A "Featured Friends" tool lets you "highlight friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates. You'll be able to create new groups of friends, or feature existing friends lists.

• The addition of a tab, allowing you to note which teams and sports you like. (You can also share updates on projects you worked on at work or school, as well as any musical acts you are interested in.)
• From a look-and-feel perspective, there's a change to note in the "wall" and "Info" buttons. They currently run horizontally across the top of the page. The redesign shifts them to column under the member's photo.
• Facebook's redesign also includes a new "infinite scroll" feature promises to more rapidly browse through photos. Facebook users will be able to search by name, hometown, school, or a myriad of other descriptions.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

The centerpiece of the interview was

Facebook rolls out face-lift for profile pages

CEO Mark Zuckerberg gives sneak peek of profile pages' new look during an interview on "60 Minutes," but you can get the new layout now.

that puts photos front-and-center, personal information packaged into a blurb at the top of the page, and custom friend groupings. It proffers a Facebook experience that's more hyper-connected and categorized than ever, with even more portions of a profile connecting to other access points on the Facebook domain--separate new fields for tagging the sports you play and the teams you follow, for example--and new ways for members to organize and "tag" their friends. You can now, for example, add a sport as an interest and tag the friends with which you play it.

"When you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging," Zuckerberg said in the interview.

Facebook has been tightening its web of social connections and intricate chronicling of activities through a series of sweeping product announcements over the course of the past few months: from Facebook Places, which brought

Facebook Places: One check-in to rule them all

The launch of Facebook Places means start-ups like Foursquare are forced to rethink their business plans--and consumers are forced to rethink the entire idea of a location-based "check-in" service.

, to the enhanced

Facebook unveils e-mail, the sequel

"Seamless messaging" will take into account e-mail, IMs, SMS, Facebook messages, and more, and offer a "social in-box" to set priorities, says CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

to the "

Facebook launches quirky 'friendship pages'

The new feature, dreamed up by an engineer at one of the company's "hackathons," lets you view the interactions between any two of your Facebook friends.

" that detail two-way interactions. The redesigned profile pages, in comparison, are a relatively light addition.

For more, check out the interview by clicking on the "60 Minutes" link below.

Contributions from CNET

[ThePsychicComedian]

Hi,
i have been blacklisted from ever joining facebook.
i know this because wheneever i try to join facebook and i get to the question regarding my sex they do NOT have my sex listed. Facebooks sex inquiry only lists The "massochist" & the "Flaggelist" and i am neither. i am a "Heterosex" (which they do NOT list). So when i try to skip the question i immediately get a command that i "MUST" choose which sex i am in order to join.

i have brought this problem to their attention but they just ignore me.

So i don't know what they have against the heterosex, seeing as mark seems to have a girlfreind (or so he says).

So any way i am TOTALLY blacklisted from ever joining facebook (much to mychagrin). OH WELL!!!!!~~ MAYBE WE BOTH WILL SURVIVE ANYWAY.

I AM
The Psychic Comedian

[formrusmcsgt]

What You Need to Know About Facebook's Facelift
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Facebook appeals to those arrested in adolescence who still hold a "look at me" perspective.....

[meghannnnnnn]

I hate it.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.