Facebook Pushes Updated Profile To All Users

Flock Browses All Your Social Connections

Whether they choose to like it or not, Facebook users will soon be switched to the social media site's new profile design, which began a voluntary rollout in December.

On its site, Facebook said it will begin moving its 500-million-plus users to the new profile, which focuses more heavily on photographs than its predecessor. The top of the profile includes a quick summary of the accountholder, as well as a row of recently tagged photographs. There also is room to highlight meaningful friendships such as teammates and co-workers, said Philip Rha, a Facebook engineer, in a company blog on Monday.

"Last month, we introduced the new profile, which now makes it even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends. For the month of December, we gave people the option to upgrade to the new profile early, and hundreds of millions of you made the switch," Rha said. "Starting today, we'll be rolling out the new profile to everyone."

The latest iteration of Facebook's profile design also lets users share more of their favorite interests and activities, according to the company. And users can tag friends "in important life experiences," it said.

Many users responded quickly -- and negatively -- in the comments section on Rha's blog posting. A great number requested a "Dislike" button, and some were concerned that other people could fill their profiles with unwanted photographs due to the site's new use of the photo-tagging mechanism to place pictures at the top of a user's site. However, if people do not want a particular picture to appear on their page they can click the "X" that appears in the corner of each photo, Facebook said last month. The picture still will show up in the photos page.

"Please bring back the old profile as an option. The New Profile is not 'better' like you think," wrote Clay Dudash, in a post that received 323 votes.

But other users reminded the social media community of Facebook's prior changes, and its adaptation to those updates and upgrades.

"It doesn't matter. Just like every change Facebook makes, you'll forget about it and it'll become the norm in a month, ready for people to moan the next time Facebook makes an improvement," said Martin Bean. "You'd be shocked if you actually saw the number of changes the profile design had went through since 2007 and think, 'Jesus, how did I forget the profile looked like THAT?'"