Being tech savvy means I’m usually the one my friends and family come to when they can’t figure something technology-related out. It looks as if maybe one day, the rate of innovation might leave even me in the dust. Scary.

Enter Common Craft. Common Craft is a company that specializes in explanations. They’ve produced plenty of videos that make sense of products or services that aren’t quite so obvious. Two of my favorites are Twitter in Plain English and Google Docs in Plain English.

Other topics include blogs, phishing scams, online video sharing and many more.

Upon further thought, my understanding of how most other people view Facebook, is very ironic. As I’ve previously pointed out, Facebook is a social networking tool. This is where most of misunderstanding is happening on the part of all the Facebook haters. Talking with people about the Facebook changes and taking into consideration previously known statistics, I realized something that should have been much more evident to me sooner. Given the number of photos hosted by Facebook, Facebook is one of the top (if not the top) photo-sharing site on the web. People seem to be viewing Facebook as a photo repository; people primarily view others’ photos (a relatively uninvolved activity). The second most used function seems to be events. Facebook events are a good way to organize things on a limited scale. Again, this is activity requires minimal interaction with others. With these as the primary activities people engage in on Facebook, the backlash against Facebook’s changes are better understood.

Most of the major changes were implemented by Facebook to enhance the social activity of the site. When the News Feed debuted, it provided a simple way to see what your friends were up to. Facebook users however were quick to label it “creepy.” The irony here lies in the fact that people appear uncomfortable with the fact that their activity is viewable by others so easily. Such anxiety completely defeats the purpose of using Facebook as a social tool. The most recent change puts the home page’s focus on status updates, much like Twitter. Facebook actually attempted to buy Twitter at one point, but couldn’t reach a deal; the latest change reflects Facebook’s response to a Twitter-like service. The latest Facebook update orients users around status updates in a conversational fashion. This sort of dialogue is clearly much more social that users merely lurking on the site. People dislike this change because it takes the focus off of what they cared about before: photos and events. This isn’t gone, however. The highlights section on the right side shows is meant specifically for photo albums and events to be shown. It could work better than it does, so there is a legitimate point where the new Facebook haters aren’t entirely wrong.

Ultimately, what Facebook’s mission, and what people actually use Facebook for aren’t quite the same. Overall, the concept of the social web is still very new and I think that fact plays a large role in understanding people’s stances on how Facebook has evolved. Hopefully as people begin to better understand what how they want social media to work for them (learning to use privacy features, moderating self-disclosure, choosing not to participate at all, etc.), there will be less hating on change. The web is the antithesis of static; hating on change just because of change represents a high degree of laziness. It will be interesting to see how Facebook (and other social networking services) continues to evolve as mobile web access becomes more ubiquitous. What’re your thoughts on the new Facebook?