Sayonara, arrivederci, and adios to the old Facebook.
No matter which way you say it, Facebook’s 100 million global users said good-bye Wednesday to the old version of Facebook and hello to the final version of the social-networking Web site’s face-lift.
It was no secret that users would be switched to the new version. Last week Mark Slee, Facebook product manager, said the time was coming.
“We can’t maintain both versions, and we really think you’ll like the new Facebook once you get used to the changes,” Slee wrote in his blog. “Sometime soon, we’re going to switch everyone over to the new Facebook.”
Slee made good on his promise exactly one week later as Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook made the permanent switch.
Facebook first announced the changes to its Web site in July in an effort to give users a new, cleaner and simpler design. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company had been working on the changes since May and invited users to try out the new design with updated features and asked for feedback.
Access to the redesign was limited at first and gradually became more available to Facebook’s large user base. The changes, according to Zuckerberg, gave users more control and ownership of their profiles and simplified the user experience.
“Facebook’s new design makes it a lot easier for users to share information, and we encourage them to check it out,” Zuckerberg said in July.
And they did. As of July, more than 100,000 Facebook users offered suggestions for the site’s layout and features, and by early September more than 600,000 users had offered feedback.
As of last week, more than 30 million users had checked out the new design and many were already using it as their Facebook, according to Slee. Many of the…