New features/look for Google Reader, StumbleUpon, Facebook

The thing about people who write software is: They’ve always gotta fiddle with it. I used to manage a software development team, so I know what I’m talking about. Those guys aren’t happy unless they’re fiddling. You just got to hope that the fiddling turns out to be an actual improvement. It’s a crapshoot.

Now when millions of people use your software and you’ve still gotta fiddle, well, you’re going to upset some (or many) of your users. I’ve noticed that three websites I use frequently have been mightily fiddled with recently.

First up is Google Reader. First, they introduced a “like” button (a la Facebook) on articles and some additional sharing features, including making it easier to follow people’s shared items. Now they’ve added a Popular Items section, moved the Recommendations for new blogs to the left sidebar (called Recommended Sources) and added a new sort for articles: Sort by Magic.

I actually like most of the changes here. The Google Reader interface still works pretty much as it always has, with just a few new geegaws, so it hasn’t slowed down my browsing any. I magically found some cool people to follow, and the Popular Items section is a great way to kill a dull Sunday afternoon looking at cute pics, fails and funny cartoons without actually having to subscribe to any of those bourgeois feeds. I turned on “sort by magic,” and to tell the truth, I don’t notice any difference in the sort order, but I love the name. My grade: A.

Facebook’s changes aren’t nearly so intuitive. They’ve instituted two feeds, a Live Feed, which shows all your friends’ status updates, and a News Feed, which is supposedly the most interesting items from the past day. I find them both equally murky, and now I’m always vaguely suspicious that I’m missing something.

I was pretty much over Facebook, anyway. My friend calls it a “very clever Rolodex,” and that’s how I’ve started to treat it, only visiting when I get a message or need to look someone up. For day-to-day status updates, I get much more value out of Twitter. My grade on the Facebook changes: C-.

Quick tip: You can restore Facebook to (more or less) its old look. On your Home page, in the top left corner, drag Status Updates to the top of the nav bar and then click on it (you may have to click on the tiny “More” to show the Status Updates option).

Finally, I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a very long time as an archive of links I’ve liked, and I think I have 1,400+ links stored there. I also use Delicious for active research and projects, but StumbleUpon is more of an archive of old links for me. And the redesign has me baffled. I can never tell what interface is going to appear when I click “Stumble It.” I don’t know whether I’ll get the option to assign categories or write a review or if the stumble will even work. It’s all way too confusing and basically makes me want to abandon the site altogether. My grade: F.

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that everything will change, whether we like it or not. And if there’s a software developer involved, the changes will be frequent, random and usually come without warning. We might as well get used to it.