I enjoy watching the video interviews Robert Scoble does for FastCompany.TV — why? It’s not so much for him, but for the REAL people in the industry he gets to discuss their website, product or just about the industry. What I really enjoy hearing and seeing is the “how” other people communicate at different companies. I take mental notes of what they do effectively and what can I adopt in my own style of communication. Communication is everything no matter what industry you are in — but having a “polish” to your presentation always is important.

I wanted to point out after watching an interview Scoble did with the lead product manager at Facebook, Mark Slee, what the rationale behind the new Facebook and it’s new user interface.

You can watch the 20-minute interview like I did… or just read the next couple of paragraphs for my “short and sweet” version.

When the News Feed was orginally launched — it’s objective was to share activity of your friends and what they were doing on Facebook. While it took a while for mass adoption, eventually people realized it truly was a valuable industry changing feature that not only saved time by bringing forward updates of all your friends — but it also help engage users to contribute more so their content would appear in their friends’ News Feeds. It was a brilliant move.

So what’s new in the new Facebook?

Feeds.

The focus of the entire redesign is on feeds. As you can see in my highly technical drawing below (spent a grand total of 4 minutes on it) the main difference is that feeds have now been pulled as the main focus for users profiles. While the old site had a “mini-feed” section, it also contained static areas like “personal information” and “favorite music” which never changed. On the new Facebook the feed is the ONLY item on the initial profile page. Furthermore, feeds are sortable on the homepage by filters; News Feed, Status Updates, Photos, Posted Items and Live Feed.

What does this mean? If users want their profiles to be populated with content — they MUST interact on Facebook. They must post photos, video, write on people’s walls, comment, etc.

If you think about it — this is a big shift. No longer does maintaining the list of your favorite movies and music artists suffice. Creating content is the new focus. Sharing is the new focus. The new Facebook makes sharing easy to do and rewards users with prominence if they do it. Much like the initial launch of News Feed, I think it will take time for mass adoption — but I do believe it’s big step in the user interface that rewards it’s users with value in investing time on the site.

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