The new Facebook design(Jan,2010) and ME

I got the new design activated on my homepage pretty lately when all of  my colleagues and friends has it on their homepage. I was kinda jealous that a techy people like me haven't got it yet :( but at last, today morning I got the new homepage and I think...


I like the design. At last they used the left side of the homepage which was almost empty and taking pretty much screen state for no reason. I don't know whether removing the bottom bar/bookmark bar will be a  problem for user to locate their favorite apps, but now they can find it all thing organized neatly in the left side.
The News Feed page changed their category name as Most Recent and Top News which makes sense of its meaning literally as the previous name (News Feed,Live Feed) was confusing, at least I was confused.
And Messaging got better. Clicking on the Message Icon at the top will show you some recent message preview and let you compose message.
Although the I like the minimalistic approach of facebooks new homepage now, but there are certain drawback to the general user with this new design. Like, The logout and settings button now under ACCOUNT menu which need more than a click now. Specially the logout button should be separated for easy logging out.
We were pretty habituated with the notification at bottom right corner. And the Notification icon(a globe) , for me its not a meaningful icon. A bubble icon could have been much more fitted as we are used to see notification around application in bubble like window (take the windows notification pop-up from taskbar).
The message icon too missed its usual icon. Instead of using thinking bubble icon (which should the notification icon have) which we do not use for message or mailing either, they can use a formal message icon that we uses to see in our mobile or email.
Of course people will always protest the new changes and several more groups will born, but do Facebook care :) I am waiting for the next redesign. Hope that will come within 6months maximum ;)

source : Facebook introduces new navigation