Wowza, Facebook just turned 6! That’s really old. It’s even older in the sense of social network years (whose ratio to calendar years must be something like 11:1). And, like any good cougar vying for young’uns, it celebrated the big day with a face lift to its homepage.

My account rolled over to the new homepage today; it’s all about navigation and accessibility this time around:

• The left column menu has been souped-up into what Facebook refers to as a ‘dashboard’ which makes it much easier for users to find and access content, applications, pages and groups. (You may recall that in the last iteration this was accessed via a menu hidden in the far left side of the bottom toolbar.)
• The global navigation puts a more prominent emphasis on notifications, new friend requests and messages. (But, you mightn’t notice this unless there’s something new for you to see, in which case the button is highlighted). The search input box is huge! …And sits front and centre.

The last redesign was all about the stream; as Facebook’s response to Twitter, it highlighted the latest content in real-time. However, there was major backlash (weird, that never happens) with the main gripes being clutter and lack of user-friendliness.

This latest layout seems to be more in line with traditional web design… could it be that 6 years of wisdom has taught Facebook to put more thought into good old fashioned usability than looking slick? A logical idea considering that baby boomers and seniors are Facebook’s fastest growing segments.

[...I guess that means I should probably take back the whole “vying for young’uns” part.]