[nissimk]

I'd like to see a discussion of this by people who understands social networks better than me. Facebook updates have been meet with similar backlash and usually result in more user acceptance long term. Is that because they are tweaked to meet expectations or the users get used to them?

It sounds like they choose to deemphasize streaks and a lot of users really love that feature.

Is there a better way to handle this sort of rollout?

[rtkwe]

Any UI change large enough to be an overhaul is likely to get the same kind of reaction as people go through whatever learning curve there is to using the new interface. Overtime people just get used to it and the new interface becomes the interface. Admittedly I wasn't scrutinizing the whole rollout of the several bemoaned Facebook overhauls but I don't really remember them really changing much of the design once it was pushed out.