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Searching For The Meaning Of You In Facebook Redesign

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Facebook on Sunday began rolling out a redesign for its profiles page that emphases friends and family photos. The site will allow members to create new groups of friends or feature existing friends in lists. The company announced changes in a blog post and email to reporters, and

The profile page now provides new ways to share interests and activities and the ability to list projects, classes in school, favorite musicians and sports teams, and more. Most of the information isn't new, but rather presented in a new way. Facebook did add a category for Sports. Not just the type of sports someone likes, but teams and athletes.

Josh Wiseman in a blog post describes the top of the new profile page as being dominated by basic information such as hometown, education, and marital status. A stream of recent tagged photos accompanies the introduction. In fact, a preview on 60 Minutes Overtime explains the redesign as focusing on photos. A bigger profile photo and the last five photos the member was tagged in. Okay, Mark, the photos are nice, but what about better search features?

And as Facebook tries to unlock the meaning of you through photos and details of your life, an interesting trend to use the site to make a statement in the fight against violence to children continues to escalate as members swap their Facebook profile photos for cartoon characters. The Huffington Post identified the trend in November. Now some Facebook members have stepped up efforts to fight child abuse.

The origin of the campaign remains a mystery. It doesn't seem to have affiliation with any organization. The Los Angeles Times points out that spikes in searches for "old cartoons" on Google through Google Trends Sunday night clearly identifies the trend. On Saturday, according to the LA Times, nearly every one of the 20 most actively searched terms has to do with "old cartoons."

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