Facebook Has Become A Cluttered Mess
With repeated exposure, one can get used to anything. Indulge in an experiment:
- Open a new browser window
- Go to Facebook.com
- Don’t scroll.
- Look at how many elements now compete for your attention
I just did that and was amazed by much crap if flying all over the screen. It’s hard to imagine many users engage with these features with any regularity. Instead, I would imagine they scroll away the mess by only looking at the center of their screens.
Let’s look at some comparison screenshots.
Yahoo
Google+
I know it’s not trendy, but I’ll say it again: Google is providing a superior social networking experience to Facebook. Now if only people would jump ship, we could all enjoy it.
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Prediction: Big Companies Will Copy This Small Foursquare Innovation
Quietly included in foursquare’s newest version is a new way of searching within a specific region. It’s a classic “little innovation -> big difference” change and I bet Google, Yelp, Stamped, and every other app that includes location-specific searches will copy it soon.
This post on FastCo.Design eloquently describes the update in the context of other services, but here’s the bottom line:
- Go to Explore in foursquare
- Move your search area into the circle
- Search for a place
Anecdotally, I’ve been testing it for the past month or so (hey, just doing my duty as a foursquare employee) and it has totally changed how I find places I want to go. If I was in the east village and needed a place in the southern section of the Upper East Side, I had to manually sift through all of Yelp’s Upper East results.
It’s also great for finding places in area I’ve never visited, like if I needed a restaurant along the river in Roanoke, VA.
Now, I just find the region in foursquare’s Explore and do my search.
It’s the little things.
Disclaimer: zomg I work at foursquare.
