It’s been a big year for Facebook.

The site celebrated its fourth birthday in February, and its first freshmen users graduated in May.

Now, both Facebook and the class of 2008 are moving toward the workforce, and they’re needing a new look.

And let’s face it: Facebook has been needing a makeover for a while, and, on Monday, it finally got one. (See it at new.facebook.com.)

Founder Mark Zuckerburg launched Facebook in 2004. Back then, the site looked very different from the clean, blue-and-white look that has become such a regular in college students’ browsers. The site hasn’t always had messaging capabilities, and users could once only upload one photo — a profile picture.

The site has come a long way.

Facebook introduced the news-feed and mini-feed in fall of 2006, third-party applications in early 2007 and chat capabilities in April — not to mention its continued efforts to make Facebook safe and secure — as efforts to increase and retain interest in the site. These efforts, however, have made the popular site cluttered and unnavigable.

Aimed at making the site more clean and simple, the folks at Facebook have spent more than a year redesigning the site’s fundamental layout.

In February, it launched a page dedicated to updating users on the redesign process and to asking users to critique the potential changes. Now, the redesign is coming to fruition, and the erstwhile version will be phased out in the coming weeks.

At first glance, the new design is startlingly different. The most obvious changes take place in the profile. Now, instead of one crowded page, the profile now clusters information into four tabs: Wall, Info, Photos and Boxes.

The Wall now encompasses more than just posts from friends. It includes the mini-feed, which has been revamped to list tidbits of activity reminiscent of microblogging sites like Twitter and Friendfeed. It can also be toggled to see more and less information at once. And now posting on walls, updating statuses, writing notes, posting links, and uploading photos and videos all happens in the same place, rather than through different links on a sidebar.

Basic information has relocated to the Info tab. Personal and contact information have moved to the Info tab as well.

Each user’s photos have been compiled into the Photos tab, making them easier to access.

And the busy applications that once cluttered the profile page have been collected into the Boxes tab, where users can rearrange them.

Users can also add more tabs if one tab isn’t enough.

The home page is now wider and easier on the eye, and it’s been rearranged for increased functionality.

Facebook is even improving its grammar. Never again will you see that “Jessica tagged themself in a photo.” “Themself” isn’t even a word! Facebook asked its users to claim a sex to help the site better translate into 16 other languages.

So, Facebook is coming around. While there are still some programming bugs, it’s clear Facebook has good intentions for its new design: it needs to grow up a little.

Even though it may be hard to adjust right away, the changes will make Facebook more mature and user-friendly.

Don’t be cantankerous — change is good!

Besides, it’s going to be a good year for Facebook. Big, but good.

Source: Facebook.com