Since he started Facebook in college four and a half years ago, Mark Zuckerberg has learned—sometimes painfully—that he can’t make significant changes to the online hangout without triggering an uproar among indignant users who preferred the status quo.
But Zuckerberg, still only 24, is hoping he has found a way to make changes so he won’t have to issue public apologies like he did the previous two years after springing new products on users.
His theory will face a major test today when Facebook will begin forcing its 100 million users to adapt to a redesigned website.
Since unveiling the makeover seven weeks ago, Facebook had left it up to users to decide whether they wanted to switch over. If they didn’t like what they saw, the converts could just click on a link to switch back to the old format.
But that option will be taken away from all users by the end of the week, a shift that Zuckerberg already knows will alienate some of Facebook’s audience and raise the risk of driving more traffic to rival social networks like MySpace and Bebo.
About 40 million users have checked out the new design and about 30 million embraced it without reverting to the old look, Zuckerberg said.
But the seeds of an uprising already have been planted on Facebook’s own site, where several groups and petitions have cropped up to protest the change.
“It’s not that we don’t want change, period, it’s that we don’t like these particular changes,” said Scott Sanders, 19, a university student who started one of the petitions. “You have to navigate more and you have to click more to get to personal profiles. It’s too much effort to get to basic information.”
Facebook’s facelift separates users’ personal profiles into different areas of the site and provides more tools that are meant to make it easier to share information and photos.
The revisions also shift various applications to the bottom of a person’s home page and clears up more white space—a move that Sanders worries will lead to more intrusive advertising on the site, although Zuckerberg said that won’t happen.
The gradual approach differed from how the Facebook management team have handled past revisions to the site.
In 2006, the startup infuriated thousands of users by introducing a tool called “news feeds” that automatically broadcast certain personal details. Last year, Facebook faced another revolt when it rolled out a tracking device, dubbed “Beacon,” that tracked and shared information about users’ shopping habits and other activities at other websites.
In both instances, Zuckerberg wound up apologizing for going too far and placated the protesters by giving more control over news feeds and Beacon. News feeds are now considered indispensable by many users, but Beacon still hasn’t gained traction.
