Another day, another Facebook revamp–am I right?  Though most people love to share their gripes about Facebook’s incessant need to change the way it looks, this particular change to our profile pages is actually (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) a good one.  Read on to find out why.

When you receive the profile page update and head over to your page, the first change you’ll notice is up top where your name is located.  Tabs are gone (they’ve been moved to the left-side pane, but more on that later) and under your name now you’ll find “a quick summary of who you are”, as Facebook so eloquently describes it.  What looks like a jumble of words at first is actually a list of key information pertaining to you.  For example, if you provide info. like your relationship status, where you go to school and what you’re studying, where you live, where you’re originally from, where you work, what languages you speak, and your birthday–all of this will be listed under your name and viewable by friends.  Directly beneath this “about me” section is a collection of recently tagged photos featuring you.  Keep in mind these highlighted photos are static; you cannot change the order of them.  All you can do is tap a small “x” to hide a particular recent photo and it will be replace by the next most recent tagged photo. Pretty cool way to “show what you’ve been up to lately”, I guess.

Now let’s journey to the left-side pane.  Now you can navigate a profile page using links listed directly below the profile picture.  Wall, Info, Photos, Notes, and Friends are listed here.  Thankfully our walls have remained in tact; what’s changed are the Info and Friends links.  Under the section Education and Work now you can tag people you worked with to specific jobs and you can add “projects” to a specific job and tag co-workers to those too.  In addition, you can add “classes” to a specific school you attend(ed) and tag classmates to them.  Networking FTW.  All of the sections within the Info pane have become a lot more visual.  For example, under the Arts and Entertainment section your Music, Books, Movies, and Television categories will display your interests more prominently using large thumbnail images.  Five thumbnails can be shown at a time, and you can rearrange the order and make your favorites stick out in Settings.  A new section called Philosophy now houses Religious & Political Views in addition to Favorite Quotation and a new section “People Who Inspire You.”  Sports is new, too; you can now share with friends the sports you play, favorite teams and athletes.

The way your friends are organized has changed.  When you click the Friends link all of your friends will be listed as large thumbnails; their profile pictures are accompanied by name and school.  Searching for friends is easier this way, you’ll see.  Underneath the five links under your profile picture you’ll find a section that highlights your friends so that people visiting your profile page can find them faster.  Facebook now gives you the option to create “featured friends”; you can create a new list of friends or add an existing list or group to your profile page.  For example, if you’ve ever specified your relationship to your mom, dad, brother, or sister this can be displayed on your profile page on the left-side pane; people will be organized by general Friends first, followed by grouped friends with labels such as Family or Work.  In this way, Facebook is encouraging you to “highlight meaningful relationships”, get it?  This can be edited under the Relationship tab in Settings.

And to wrap things up the last major addition to the new profile page is Friendship Page.  When you access a friend’s profile page you’ll find at the top right corner called “You and [Friend’s Name].”  Under this title you’ll find a listing of mutual friends any similar interests you might share.  If you click the “See Friendship” link it’ll bring you to a Friendship page that digs deeper into your, well, relationship.  Mutual friends, wall posts, tagged photos, and things you both like are highlighted here.  And if you’re really bored you can browse friendships between two of your friends.

Overall, I’d say that this Facebook facelift is pretty swell.  The about me section, the tagged photo collection, the relocation of the navigation links, visual interests, broader networking options, faster friend search–it all combines to make for a more streamlined, frankly better browsing experience.  The update is being rolled out to all users today; if you can’t wait one second longer click here to manually activate it yourself.

[Via Facebook]