redesign for Facebook on 6th birthday

Facebook is redesigning its site yet again, this time to better emphasize applications, games and search.

The latest evolution continued on Friday after Facebook started rolling the changes out late Thursday, the company’s sixth birthday. Links and items have moved around the home page as Facebook tries to streamline navigation and make games and apps stand out more.

The world’s largest online social network has continuously morphed its home page as it’s grown from a closed hub for college students to a web and mobile destination for 400 million people worldwide.

Past changes have sparked protests from many users, though Facebook says it makes them to serve its audience better. Facebook says that it conducts months of testing and that many users request such changes.

With the latest redesign, links to friend requests, messages and comment notifications are no longer scattered around and now reside on the top of the page. The search box is more prominent, as is the site’s chat feature. Users can now see friends who are currently online without clicking on a link. This doesn’t include all friends, only the ones they communicate with often.

There are also new links on the left that take users to online dashboards where they can organise games and applications and find new ones by seeing what their friends use.