by Christopher Gryniewicz

Created on: March 05, 2010

Imagine if every time you booted up your computer the operating system was completely different. Maybe you're running Windows 2000, you click on the My Computer Icon, and suddenly you're working in Vista. Logging off in frustration, you come back the next day to find it running 98 and all your icons got moved around. This is how many people feel about Facebook. The “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!” group on Facebook has over 2,000,000 fans, but the problem is, what is normal? The social networking giant has changed it's layout so many times that the normal for one member may be entirely different from the normal for another.

In response to the most recent set of changes in February of 2010, Facebook engineer Jing Chen said that they were, "In keeping with our commitment to innovation, these product releases are part of Facebook's ongoing efforts to streamline the site and make it easier to use.” A very diplomatic response for a radically different layout riddled with glitches.

So, why change it? Because they can! Just like Microsoft has dominion over the OS world, Facebook is the king of the social network. The most recent data shows that Facebook has double the number registered users as Qzone, which was number one only a year ago. The biggest problem with Qzone, for most of the world, is that it's only in Chinese. To maintain its status at the summit of the proverbial mountain, Facebook must project the image of a strong leader. This means keeping ahead of the technology curve. With so many other fledgling networking sites vying for their own small slice of the social pie Facebook has to stay ahead of the copycats.

The biggest downside to this constant push for something better comes in the lack of adequate time for bug fixing. For those who could remember the release of Microsoft 7, Vista, 2000, Me, or... the list goes on, each one came out with many improvements and many, many glitches. The same is true for each update of Facebook. After the February 2010 update many Facebook users became plagued by the 'Oops' pop-up screen. Status updates, applications, and photo uploads were met with a notice of technical difficulties. This, of course, calls for a whole new round of changes and updates as the Facebook staff has to revise the revisions.

The 400,000,000 registered Facebook users in the world today will simply have to be patient with the Facebook staff while they work to find a that balance between what users want and how to deliver the best service available for social networking. Like them or not we should expect to see more changes on the horizon for this global leader.

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