In real life, if my mate told me he was now friends with some random guy he met at a pub, I’d wonder why I was being punished with such a shit story.

New Facebook updates hit this weekend. Every time my friends make a new friend, I get notified. Why am I being punished with such shit stories?

Facebook is now a continual stream of noise. It seems that every time my friends post anything on anything anywhere I get notified. Facebook is the new Twitter.

So apparently the Facebook geniuses made these changes largely as a result of user feedback.

Let me let you in on a secret of good software design. You can ask users for feedback. And then you are better off ignoring everything they say and doing it properly.

I exaggerate. A little. A good designer must take that input, find the nuggets that are actually useful, and then implement something that is actually going to work. Generally the user has not thought through all the use cases of the change they’ve requested. Do you think Apple create their legendary interfaces based solely on user input? Even Microsoft are smart enough to not do that.

Not following? Think about the car built for Homer.

This is Facebook as of today.