Facebook New Site Design and New Ads Format

To celebrate Facebook 6th Year. Facebook is now comes up with many new Facebook products and also a new Facebook design. Facebook has been continuously iterating on their new design with the latest version showing a new location for Facebook Chat. Over the past few weeks we have been receiving messages from users who have been part of Facebook�s ongoing user testing of the new homepage design, however this latest design has one significant change: Facebook Chat has been moved to the sidebar.


There are some fundamental issues with this design, the most significant of which is that the number of bookmarked applications displayed appears to be limited to 5 and then the user must click on �More� to see more. The new facebook design is seems to be fast and user friendly and people can change it according to their needs.

While the volume of users being tested with the new design appears to be increasing, Facebook is still clearly in the process of making ongoing adjustments. The most significant change in this latest iteration is the adjustment of the chat. Aside from that, Facebook is only making subtle adjustments at this point. You can see the difference from the last iteration in the screenshots below.

In addition to consolidating a number of links under �Settings�, Facebook is rapidly iterating on the new homepage design which is expected to launch in the next couple months.


Facebook New Ads Format

Facebook is also focusing to change its Advertisement design for a new facebook. Previously, Facebook had tested a format in which 5 advertisements were displayed on each page. With the new �Suggestions� area, the number of ads has been cut down to 3, the same number which has traditionally appeared in the sidebar. Limiting the advertising real estate seems a bit counter intuitive for a company which relies heavily on ad revenue to survive.

As I already mentioned though, perhaps Facebook has shown that the presence of �Suggestions� actually increases clicks on the advertisements. Do you like the new Facebook design? As an advertiser, are you concerned that it may decrease the performance of ads?