Forget Haiti, and forget healthcare. By the looks of my news feed, people have moved on to worrying about something they really care about: the new Facebook profile layout.
Apparently, it's the most radical change in, well, anything since … the last time Facebook changed its layout. And before that, probably the American Revolution.
Come on, people. This really isn't that big of a deal. Let's be honest. Within a couple weeks, we'll all get used to the new, more prominent search bar, the fact that we can now see friends we often chat right on the home page, the new notification area and the extra click it takes to log out. Okay, that last one is actually really annoying, but other than that, the changes are pretty useful. We'll all join a couple "GET YOUR OLD FACEBOOK LAYOUT BACK" groups, invite all our friends in a futile attempt to get said layout back, and when it doesn't come back, move on with our Facebook lives. I mean, we did it the first time. And however many other times it changed.
Remember when the Wall was first integrated with the (gasp!) News Feed? And (oh, no!) we first got a different tab for information and photos? We all made a huge deal about the "new" layout then, and now we want to go back to it. In fact, I'm sure Facebook will change something again before the football team's 2011 bowl game (crossing my fingers it's in 2011), and we'll all complain about it again. A few weeks from now, we'll become attached to new Facebook and become a fan of "SIGN THE PETTITION TO STOP CHANGING FACEBOOKKKKK PLEEZE," which will, unfortunately, have thousands of fans. It's just the way things work.
And on the positive side of things, the new privacy settings make the time-honored tradition of Facebook stalking much easier. Yeah, we've all done it. That cute girl you met (but don't really remember talking to) at the party last night? She probably didn't update her privacy settings, so now you and your friends can nurse your hangovers while clicking through her profile pictures and discovering that, well, maybe she wasn't as cute as you thought. But hey, you wouldn't know that if it wasn't for new Facebook. So give thanks for new Facebook, maybe even dedicate a Facebook status to it. Just remember that when it happens again, you should embrace those changes too. Because you'll probably end up liking them in the end. And maybe, just maybe, they'll go back to a one-click logout.
