2008 was definitely the year that social was brought into the mainstream. Nearly all big social networking sites have redesigned to accommodate their quickly growing audiences, while the big portals have incorporated many social features into their front pages.

It's still too early to say whether many of these are good or bad. Will Yahoo's drastic home page redesign be good or bad for them in the long run? Will Facebook's new look, which stirred quite a bit of opposition from their users, eventually turn out to be a good move? Let's take a look at what the big boys have done and how it's worked for them so far.







Facebook's redesign was controversial, to say the least. It began as an option which was then gradually rolled into the default look of the site, despite strong opposition from users who even formed (relatively large) Facebook groups to express their discontent. Personally, I think it was the best move in the company's history; Facebook was thoroughly cleaned up of those silly apps - at least on the surface - and the fears that it might turn out to be another MySpace were allayed.

Instead, it was turned into the perfect social lifestream, with activities from you and your friends in the spotlight, and everything else optional. Also, Facebook chose to implement ads very carefully, making sure they're noticeable without getting in the way of your normal activities on the site. As far as problems go, frequent errors, slowness and problems with data syncing continue to plague Facebook to this day, and due to their huge and rapidly growing user base, they likely won't go away soon.







Concerned about users' backlash, MySpace decided to roll out Profile 2.0 without forcing users to switch. Therefore, thousands of MySpace layouts haven't been rendered obsolete, at least not overnight. Profile 2.0 brought easier customization and drag and drop functionality, as well as a number of spiffy looking new themes.

It wasn't all just about the looks: a lot of effort has been put into improving privacy options, which are now akin to those on Facebook, and let users decide which parts of their profile they'll show to everyone, and which ones will stay private. However, this overhaul - due to the fact that it's not mandatory - hasn't really changed MySpace's look and feel that their users have learned to love (and often hate). Is this a good or a bad thing? Time will tell.







Flickr's redesign put emphasis on the social features of the site. Under Contacts, you can now see a stream of new photos from your friends, which was probably an attempt to battle the fact that more and more users seem to be turning to Facebook for their photo sharing needs. They've also added the Explore option, which is a bit like StumbleUpon for photos. Overall, the changes on the new Flickr are relatively subtle, but they're a good indication that Flickr wants to be less of an online photo storage solution and more of a full-featured social networking site.







If there's one big social media site that can be called "old school" and "spartan" in appearance, it's Reddit. Being little more than a long list of titles, Reddit always cared more about content than looks. The recent redesign, however, was very welcome: the site is organized better and the categories are a lot easier to find. The ability to customize the site and bring forth only the topics that really interest you doesn't hurt, either.

As a personal note, I'd like to add that Reddit's changes made me visit the site more often, while the changes their biggest competitor, Digg, implemented in 2008 (although they haven't done a full blown redesign this year) only drove me away from the site.







Twitter's redesign has been subtle, but it brought a host of welcome changes. The most interesting one was the introduction of an AJAX element which sped up the user experience; they've also moved the tabs to the right, and the profile editor has been significantly improved. Some oft requested features, such as groups, are still missing.







As an avid Last.FM user, I was (and still am) unhappy with this redesign. Yes, the interface has been cleaned up a little, but it took me a while before I found often used features, and even now I'm not sure that the new organization of the site is better than the old one. Some features have been unnecessarily simplified; you cannot, for example, search for events based on the exact proximity to a certain location. On the upside, they didn't really mess it up very much; it's still your good old Last.FM, it just takes some getting used to. I'm just not sure whether they're going forward or backward with it.







Perhaps the most dramatic redesign - or perhaps complete overhaul - has been done by the financially troubled old giant Yahoo. When you've got the world's most popular portal, abandoning the traditional "web portal" concept is a tough decision, but Yahoo has jumped right into it.

The site is now almost entirely customizable, and Yahoo has provided an API for developers to create applications that can be integrated with the site. Contrary to the traditional view of what a web portal should be, the new Yahoo will actually be quite different for each user. The question that hasn't yet been answered is: Will the majority of users who are accustomed to a static web portal embrace these changes?







AOL's redesign, although not yet visible to all users, is also a step in the social direction, however not as drastic as Yahoo's. It's still ye olde web portal, only now it has a bunch of widgets to connect you with your favorite social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, AIM, Bebo and Twitter. There's no revolution here, but it's more proof that the static web portal is on its way out, while social networking has entered the mainstream.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Rellas