What is an Aside (i dunno) . Why did facebook redesign ( i know the answer to that), every body seems to hate the new design (is it really new, the old one is  just a few months old) , any way facebook redesigned for a really simple reason, they wanted to increase their ad space, lets take a look at the new design

"New" Facebook Design

I deliberately left the image at full size so that you can immediately notice the large amount of space ads are occupying, also note that the very first thing on the right hand corner are ads  (after some blurb like thingie showing you a few notifications, wham! they hit you with the ads) This seems like a small difference when you consider all the beef people have against the new design but take a look at the last design generation

m.week blurb

Can you see the difference on the top right corner, its filled with “you” stuff , and no commercial stuff, just a lot of notifications, big differences in design for a single purpose, increasing ad space,  increase ad space AND ad prominence, reduce ad blindness (tendency of people to overlook ads) call ads highlights and (hopefully) increase revenue.

What People Forget

Facebook is a business, not a good will organization. They are hosting all this great stuff (and generate lots of cyber buzz) but they hardly make any money, this is a problem most user generated content web sites face, which is why wikipedia is spending time asking (begging?) people for money, and Digg is still not profitable (and is rapidly being controlled by a bunch of tyranical users). Facebook needs to generate income one way or another, and we do not know how much they make right now (since its a privately held company) but they are definitely trying to increase their revenue, their methods should be closely noted, since all companies that hope to ape that model can benefit from it.