After all the hubbub earlier this week, it seemed possible that Facebook would roll out its new profile design in time for the three-day weekend. Instead, the company has taken the half-step of opening a beta sandbox to developers.
So far, some developers aren’t taking kindly to the layout. The first comment following a forum announcement came from Arihant Agarwal, who wrote, “Congratulations on making the worst thing on facebook EVER!” Others more or less followed suit.
New Facebook Profile – Back To The Sandbox
Whatever they think of the changes, though, developers are at least likely to appreciate this heads up of sorts. As for the average user, Facebook’s Pete Bratach is still talking about a June launch; this is consistent with what was said following a delay in April.
Back to the sandbox, then. On the Facebook Developers blog, Bratach writes, “We hope that as you try out the new application integration points, you’ll start thinking of ways you can engage your users more meaningfully. We expect applications that engage users with rich content and great experiences will thrive with the new design.”
Also, “If you want to take the new design out for a test drive before changing your own applications, you can tinker with the MySmiley application that we developed. . . . Remember this is a beta sandbox for the new profile only, so some features are not necessarily enabled and others are still in flux.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if Facebook makes a few alterations in order to please developers.