Facebook revamp adds photo and chat features

Facebook is six years old this month

Facebook has celebrated its sixth anniversary with several new features and a home page redesign.

The new features include a Photos dashboard that allows users to browse recent photos of all their friends from one page, and a Chat with Friends feature that shows which of a user's most popular friends are available to chat.

The California-based company has also fixed a privacy issue in the Applications dashboard that emerged earlier this week and caused some concern.

Other features provided by the social networking site have been relocated, and users will have to learn how to navigate the new interface.

Facebook discussed the new products and homepage design with users in a blog post, and most of the comments left so far have been negative, but then most of the new designs Facebook has enacted have received initial opposition.

A couple of updates to the Facebook interface will tell users what may be waiting for them when they log-in to the site.

For instance, the Notifications tab, which tells users when they have wall posts, accepted friend requests and application updates, has been relocated from the bottom right of the page to the top left. And two other tabs, in the same corner, tell users when they have new friend requests, suggested friends or new messages.

Other changes include the Applications feature being moved from the bottom bar to the left hand menu on the side of the homepage, along with tabs giving event details, games access and the Marketplace facility.

The Applications feature was recently updated to allow users to see their friends' most recent activity, such as which of their contacts had joined a dating site. Some users were upset with the update's lack of privacy, and Facebook has announced a new privacy control.

Users who would rather not have their application activity visible to their friends in the dashboards can change this through their privacy settings.

The new Photos dashboard is also available on the left hand side of the page, as well as a Friends dashboard that lets a user quickly view their contacts' recent activity.

Account users will now find their Home and Profile links in the top right corner along with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the ability to log out.

Facebook said that it had tested several different designs of the homepage in recent months.

The firm added that to mark the celebration its engineers worked all night on new projects that may be developed into products soon.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post that the site now has 400 million users, double the number recorded last year.