Visitors to Facebook in the next few days may notice a few changes to the site, and as we know from the infamous introduction of “feeds” back in 2006, any change to a social networking site that’s 80 million strong is a big change. To minimize potential blowback, Facebook will be rolling out the redesign and new features gradually over the course of several weeks.
Besides a fresh visual style, the redesign also brings with it a number of more practical changes to the site. Feeds, for instance, have been tweaked yet again. Users will have more control over the way their own feeds look, with the ability custom the size of each news item and how prominent it is. Walls will also pull more “current and pertinent” stories about users and their friends.
And if the auto-generated stories that come from user tweaks aren’t to their liking, they’ll also be able to generate their own custom stories with the publisher feature, which now has its own tab to make using it even easier. Users can also add their own tabs now, such as for a Facebook application, to give themselves shortcuts to the most frequently used apps.
As for apps, users have more control over them than ever. They can now play with an app before deciding to add it, decide (as always) whether to grant it access to their information, and control where it goes once it’s added.
While some portions of users will be automatically transitioned to the new Facebook over the coming weeks, users who want a sneak peak can try using new.facebook.com, which will give them the option to experiment with the new features and design.
