Quick Thoughts on the New Facebook Redesign

Yes, everyone seems to hate it -- although, my very informal research indicates that most Twitter enthusiasts (I will resist using the term Twits) love it. But what's really going on with the new Facebook--why such a radical change for the company, so soon after the last redesign? I've been reading some intelligent thoughts on this (see here for example) and wanted to weigh in my 2 cents.

At this juncture in it's history, Facebook is facing a very stark choice between two radically different business models; and yes, it's the same choice facing every other media company, Old or New in this environment: subscription or advertising?

Regular readers of this blog -- Oh wait, this is the first post--that is, everyone who has ever heard me pontificate over an Irish whiskey, knows that I think the traditional advertising model is in its death throes. But that, on the other hand, consumers aren't yet ready to move on to a pure pay-for-content model. So we're stuck here in a transitional phase where you can't make money on either subscriptions or paid content, which explains why nearly every media company is losing money.

With the redesign, our FB friends are clearly making a bet on the advertising side, despite the crappy environment for ad sales. What does the new news feed do? It provides tons more links to all those application pages, where they sell those big, top of the page banners that in theory should provide higher ad rates than the little boxes on the side. The new functionality is geared toward the needs of advertisers, rather than those of users.

We can debate the wisdom of this plan in the long-term, but I think it's pretty clear that despite all the fear you hear out there, FB is not about to become a paid service any time soon.

UPDATE: Check out Peter Feld's take on how bad the redesign is. Peter makes some excellent points...but I would add this: as long as people aren't willing to pay for Facebook, the company will choose to please advertisers over users. It's a nasty Catch 22.