In One Image, How Much Facebook’s App Design Has Changed Over The Last 10 Years
Image via Neirfy / Shutterstock.com
9to5Mac recently celebrated a decade of the App Store by looking at the design evolution of some of the earliest apps, including Facebook, Evernote, eBay, and Yelp.
The image of Facebook’s app design evolution from 2008 to 2017 was shared to Twitter by The Verge’s senior editor Dan Seifert with the words, “[T]his image from @9to5mac is a fascinating study in the changes of app design over the past decade. [T]here’s more information density in the 2008 Facebook app than in any one after it. And it shows FOUR TIMES as many posts in a 3.5� screen than the current app does on 5.8�.�
Seifert followed up through a subsequent tweet inside the thread, “[W]hat does this translate to?�
“[I]t means you have to scroll much more to read more posts[,] which means you spend more time in Facebook. [I]t artificially keeps you trapped within the app.�
The thread sparked a mini discussion about the dearly missed chronological feed that used to be a norm on social media networks, “information density,� and more.
You can read the thread here and see the app design evolutions of the aforementioned names plus more over on 9to5Mac.
this image from @9to5mac is a fascinating study in the changes of app design over the past decade. there's more information density in the 2008 Facebook app than in any one after it. And it shows FOUR TIMES as many posts in a 3.5" screen than the current app does on 5.8". pic.twitter.com/XUf88rYG49
— dan seifert (@dcseifert) July 10, 2018
what does this translate to?
it means you have to scroll much more to read more posts.
which means you spend more time in Facebook.
it artificially keeps you trapped within the app.
— dan seifert (@dcseifert) July 10, 2018
photos were shared to Facebook far less back in 2008.
my point is, if it was a photo I cared about, I could click through to see it. the current design forces me to scroll past it to move along to something else.
— dan seifert (@dcseifert) July 10, 2018
that’s just a matter of preference tho. your one tap to get into a photo might be one step more than another person wants to make, and passive wins out. so the posts aren’t as succinct/stackable, but the content is as dense if not more so with the addition of larger images/video.
— Dylan C. Lathrop (@DylanLathrop) July 10, 2018
“Information density� is often user-hostile and scrolling is free (very cheap in terms of user effort) so it makes all the sense in the world to decrease density and spread out information for the sake of legibility.
— Dustin Locke (@dustinlocke) July 10, 2018
And the 2008 version of the app shows posts in chronological order. It's unbelievable to think a 2008 iPhone was able to handle such an advanced technology. https://t.co/UsOleIklpC
— César de Tassis Filho (@CTF) July 10, 2018
Starting about 2013 all those apps started going “flat� less than a year after Windows 8 was released with their flat UI. Interesting transition
— Micah Iverson (@MicahIverson) July 11, 2018
[via dcseifert, main image via Neirfy / Shutterstock.com]