Up until yesterday Facebook’s system for users displaying interests was quite simply poor. Clicking on an item took one to a search for that term, and as you may know, Facebook’s search was (and is) poor at best. Finding which friends had similar interests was unnecessarily complicated, and if a term was spelled incorrectly (on your profile or a friends) it would be impossible to match your given interest to theirs. Additionally, clicking on a term often results in failure to find more information about the term. If I list under musical interests “Unicron Kid” (misspelling Unicorn Kid), then clicking the term will not be likely to show you the artists page.

This ended today.

Facebook has now linked pages to do interests; removing the “pages” section of one’s profile, and giving context to your interests. Now instead of being taken to a search, the vast majority of interests redirect to a Facebook page. Clicking on “Kill Bill” doesn’t show me a list of search results, but instead takes me to the page for the film. Also, you can rearrange items, such as to “show off” a particular item, and place items of higher interest in immediate view, and others a click away.

As you can see, the new thumbnails provide a very quick look at the interests of the person in question. I moved a few things around to make sure it worked as it appeared to, and it absolutely did. This new format is endlessly better than it was, and does away with hyperlinks that are simply explanatory text. I had introduced my interests before with a simple “I enjoy”, which by default became a link.

This new layout greatly increases the usefulness of interests on the site, and reduces the hassle the links used to be. Clicking on “Lost” shows me that 5 friends also ‘like’ the show, and doesn’t show me any fan pages.

Interests was one of the last truly lagging portions of the site, with users totally unaware that what they typed would become links. This redesign has done a lot to reduce typos, and add a professional quality to profiles that wasn’t there.

Although every major change to the site stirs up a legion of half-hearted dissenters, I doubt this one will have the same effect. The only real debatable change was pushing the interests further down on a profile. Personally, I love this change. It places greater emphasis on the more important “quotes” and “about me” areas. These have been renamed “Bio” and “Favorite Quotations”. Before now these most telling sections were hidden under a mass of links to whatever one listed as interests. Now they are the first major feature on a profile. No matter how much you can tell about me by my favorite films and music, my hand-written bio and quotes tell you far more.

I’m honestly interested again in visiting friend’s profiles, and I have to think that these changes will prompt people to review everything they have posted and modify the content appropriately. After all, now that your bio carries more weight, changing it from a one-line blurb about how fun you are to a decent description should seem like a good idea.