How’s that Facebook redesign revolt going?
It’s been about 7 weeks since Facebook’s redesign (their second in six months). The first redesign was rolled out starting in July 2008, and about 40% (roughly 40M users at the time) were opting in to the new beta. By mid September, all users were seeing the new design whether they wanted to or not. This caused all kinds of Facebook “change it back” groups to sprout up. The result? Facebook has doubled in size, swelling to 200M users (according to them).
Since Facebook launched their second redesign, the Petition Against the “New Facebook” group has grown significantly, but appears to be leveling off at around 1.7M members. Unquantifiable are other disgruntled users who didn’t join groups or vote in feedback polls. According to (rough) Quantcast estimates, it took 3 months for traffic to recover from redesign 1. Redesign 2 was rolled out during a period of steeper growth, in mid March 2009. So it remains to be seen if the recovery time will be quicker. I bet it will.
But it’s apparent that the redesign dent seems more acute this time, and also happening when Twitter’s traffic is fully tipping (not counting mobile and other desktop clients). One of the goals of redesign 2 was to better position themselves in response to a growing Twitter messaging platform. Facebook users who mainly used the status update feature could be warming up to Twitter — and that might be magnifying that dent slightly.