Facebook Unveils New Profile Pages

On Sunday, Facebook announced big changes for Profile pages, hours before Mark Zuckerberg's '60 Minutes' interview. The biggest change is the emphasis on photos: from the summary at the top of the page to photos of your relationships, images dominate the new design. You'll also notice that Facebook has done away with the old tabbed interface that separated your wall, info, photos and events into different pages. These viewing options have largely been pushed into the left rail below your primary profile photo.

Instead of hiding most of your personal information behind the 'Info' tab, the new design features an introduction at the top of your profile page that summarizes your job, relationship status, hometown, birthday and more. Beneath your summary is a row of the most recently tagged photos of you. Because these are highlighted so prominently on your profile, you'll probably need to be even more vigilant than before in making sure bad party pics or embarrassing high school candids are removed. Fortunately, you can hide any of the photos in your new Profile summary by clicking the 'x' that appears when you hover over each one.

Your relationship status and significant other will be revealed directly beneath your profile photo. Facebook is also introducing the sure-to-be controversial Featured Friends section in the left rail. You can use friends lists to highlight (micromanage?) your family, best friends and other "friends who are important to you." The Friendship Pages that debuted in October are now integrated directly into the profile page; you'll find a Friendship module showing off shared photos and friends at the top right of profiles you visit with a link to explore the more detailed Friendship Page.

Facebook now visually displays most of your personal info (including music interests, college and employer) by using photos instead of text links. Your personal likes will become easily browsable grids of movie, book and album cover art. Additionally, your photo albums now have infinite scroll, so you'll be able to scroll or tap the space bar to move quickly through hundreds of photos.