I wanted to make a couple observations/comments about the Facebook redesign.

As background, I am probably a moderately active Facebook user.  I have more friends on FB than I do on Twitter, and it has basically replaced my personal contact list in a lot of ways. I probably go to the site every other day or so.

Observation #1: The Publisher Looks Great

I must say that I really like the publisher.  The design is elegant, and I’m glad that it’s the central feature of the site.  The stream is much like my old news feed, but I anticipate that it will become more rich as users start to “publish” more than just “update” their news feeds.

Observation #2: I Don’t Get the Junk on the Right

The right column looks kind of like a mess to me.  At first blush, it seemed to surface interesting content. But as I’ve refreshed the page a few times today, I haven’t really noticed a steady stream of interesting content.  Also, this right column seems to have pushed down the “People You May Know” section so that it’s way below the fold.  Maybe this won’t be the case for newer users (or maybe at this point in the company’s evolution, that feature doesn’t matter), but I’ve always gotten a lot of value out of that feature.

Observation #3: Friends are not Followers

There’s been a lot of talk about this redesign attacking Twitter head on.  I don’t think this is really the right aspiration for Facebook.  For me, it comes down to the difference between a “follower” and a “friend”.  I follow a lot of people on Twitter that I am not really friends with.  I enjoy getting a pulse of what my friends are doing on Twitter, but i also enjoy and learn a lot from people who I follow that I don’t know personally.  Conversely, I think a lot of the folks who follow me wouldn’t consider me a friend, and probably wouldn’t want to share a stream of personal photos with me.

What I notice with people starting out on Twitter is that a lot of people will initially link their Twitter updates to their Facebook account.  This partially solves the “empty room problem”.  But the majority of these people I find eventually disconnect their Twitter updates from Facebook, because the relationships and conversations that happen are so different.

As a result, I’m pretty confused about how my behavior is really going to change with this redesign.  I guess time will tell.