Kate, you’re spot-on. When I logged on this morning (Wednesday!), I was not expecting what I saw. While I haven’t had a lot of time to play around with it, I completely agree with your argument in this post. Every time we turn around, Facebook changes its layout and sneaks in a few security tweaks and “social integrations” designed to let advertisers target us more closely and exploit our social interactions to further their ads.

As a marketer, it’s fascinating to see how easy it is to target ads and promotions to specific geographies, demographics, and even sentiments. As a user, it’s disconcerting to watch my ads shift from wedding-based (when my relationship status was “engaged”) to baby-based (when it went to “married”), like advertisers are watching my every move, waiting for the right time to strike. I don’t click regardless.

My main complaint about the redesign at this point is the removal of the viewing options for the news feed– top news vs. most recent news. Whenever I logged in, I always clicked to view the most recent news. I don’t want Facebook thinking for me, deciding which of my friends’ posts I’m going to read first. I want to read it on my own terms, in the order it happened. Maybe it’s some sort of control issue (might not be the first time, ha!) or some fixation on chronological order, but scrolling 75% of the way down the page is killing my user experience.

It might be my time to start migrating to Google+, something I’ve been waiting on the sidelines to try out in earnest.

Stepping off my soapbox now… great post, Kate! Well worth the read and consideration.