BY MICHAEL HANSBERRY / Staff Writer

Facebook has undergone yet another design layout. The layout that once baffled users is now known as the “old” Facebook.

The change switches the style from a vertical to a more horizontal theme. The Wall and News Feed stretches across the page, making it the center focus of the page.

The main friends list now includes all friends, instead of the primary network. Tabs now separate the Wall, info, photo and the new boxes feature.

Members have the option to revert back to the old Facebook, but will soon have the new one permanently. This has led hundreds of thousands of people to protest the new features.

In a recent statement posted by product manager Mark Slee on The Facebook Blog, six months of surveying and feedback led to the latest Web site design change.

“One of our key goals of this project has always been to make the site simpler and cleaner,” Slee said.

Members first became agitated when high school students were allowed to join. The irritation did not stop there.

The arrival of the News Feed, which chronicles what seems to be every action taken by one’s friends, troubled users and even forced some to deactivate their accounts. Next was the Mini-Feed, then Gifts, Top Friends and most recently, Facebook chat. Some students feel Facebook is an overload.

Originally started for students at Harvard University, “thefacebook.com” was a way for students to keep in contact with each other. There was no wall, events, messages, groups and only one photo was allowed.

Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said in his blog that change can be confusing, but it makes the site better in the long run.

“It’s our goal to provide a tool that helps people understand what’s going on with the people around them; all of our additions and changes contribute towards this goal,” Zuckerberg said.

These changes have sparked countless online petitions against many of the new applications offered — more than 70,000 people are in the group “Facebook: Stop Invading my privacy!” “Students Against Facebook News Feed” has almost 200,000 members. And arguably, the most irritating Facebook feature to date, Applications, has an opposition group of one million.

“I think they’re pretty irrelevant,” says Kat Grilli, a junior in theatre. “I thought Facebook was intended to be a social network. It’s a hassle to get invitations to join this cause and add this application and become a pirate.”

But not all students are against the changes. Justin Pike, a junior in computer science, believes the applications aren’t such a bad idea.

“I think they are good changes,” Pike said. “They allow more customizations to your page to represent who you are and let others know who you are and what you’re interested in.”

Facebook used to be limited to only college students, but now anyone can join, whether they are enrolled in school; the only criteria is members have to be at least 13 years old.

A public search option is also available for search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.

It allows people to find the name and profile picture of Facebook users. Although members can turn off the public search feature, some are still bothered by this.

Skye Bartlett, a grad student in Spanish, said she thought Facebook would only be limited to college students.

“I joined because I thought it was for college students only, and now, it feels like MySpace, and anyone can join, and creepy guys can find you.”

As long as Facebook thinks changes need to be made, they will make them accordingly.

An entire overhaul has begun since its first days as a Harvard-based Web site.

Zuckerberg said a lot of changes have been made, and they are still not done improving.