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Facebook removes the Status Box... who directs UI over there

9 points by xstaticdev ↗ HN
Checking out Facebook a few minutes ago, I noticed that the Status Box on the wall was missing. Now you need to choose Status, Photo, Link, or Video before getting a status box. Instead of typing a status and clicking a button, you now click a button, enter the status, and then click another button. From 2 Steps to 3!

On the new profile, if you want to see the person's email, phone, or website links (for example), you need to click on their profile and still click info to see the rest of the details. I'm not sure that is an improvement either.

Who makes the UI decisions at Facebook? What were they thinking????

5 comments

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gabaix
They created the status box in response to Twitter. Now they realize people connect on many extra things including pictures (Instagram) or videos. I am kinda surprised too.
xstaticdev
While that is true, in the old method it had the status box, with the other links (photo, video, link, etc) below it. It was still a 2 click process.

I would think that most people enter a personalized status message most of the time, regardless of whether they are just posting a simple status, a photo, or a link.

Just seem dumb to me, and of no benefit, to make it a 3 click process.

meatsock
so far noone is addressing what i imagine is the utter uselessness of a majority of status updates. maybe making it harder to find will affect those who update their status just because the box is on the screen first. another potential benefit might be better organization of your datastreams in that updates are more strongly typed; i.e. urls are links, text is text, and images are images. i imagine it's very difficult to determine what's supposed to be a URI vs bad typing. whatever it was that looked at your status update and then got info from the URL (thumbnail, desc) has been pretty terrible for a while now, so maybe this will make it better. if not, i won't miss status updates from anyone who can't figure it out.
NZ_Matt
The status box auto-focuses, so it's still only two clicks.
lzimm
good point. on the other hand, however, perceived cost has always been more important than actual cost, and that's when it comes to absolutely anything, including UI.