How to get the new Facebook profile design now

Facebook has rolled out a redesign of its profile pages – one that shrinks down biographical information and favors photographs and multimedia over text. Beginning today, Facebook users can opt to display the bulk of their information – from organizations to photo albums – in a linear visual format which Facebook reps say should make it easier for you to "tell your story."

"The profile also gives you new ways to share your interests and activities," Facebook engineer Josh Wiseman wrote today on the Facebook blog. With the rejiggered display, Wiseman added, you can "share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire. All your interests and experiences are now represented with images, making your entire profile a more compelling visual experience."

Interested in trying out the new Facebook profile set-up? It's easy. Navigate over to this sub-site, and click the green button on the top right of the screen. From there, you can take a quick tour of your new profile, alerting you to the various updated functionalities. For our part, we like the new set-up – it's clean, sharp, and simple to customize.

But predictably, within minutes of the profile redesign announcement, the comments section of the Facebook blog was overflowing with angry screeds. "Will you please settle on a layout and develop it properly instead of introducing a new one every time one of your competitors does something new?" one user wrote. "It's like a teenager who can't decide what dress to wear for the ball and ends up wearing the same one as everyone else."

Other users were a little more concise: "I personally dont like it. I think it's too messy looking and honestly would rather the old profile!"

So should Facebook be worried? No. As we noted back in May, Facebook haters are often all bark and no bite. Over the past few years, the social networking site has been slammed with a range of complaints – Facebook is destroying privacy; Facebook has too many bugs and glitches; the new Facebook design is stupid; Facebook is too acquiescent when it comes to vicious online debates over the Prophet Mohammad.

And yet very few people have actually quit the site. A real Facebook walk-out? We'll believe it when we see it.