[yuvadam]

As opposed to previous minor redesigns, this time Facebook has complete lost it.

Basically what you're missing out on is "subscribing" to non-friends a-la-Twitter, horrible page layouts, numerous bugs, and way too many options and configurations.

No Facebook, I do not want to manage my friends as if this is some kind of war room. Stop it.

And someone please let Zuck know that we're not in 1999 anymore. Floating frames and detached sidebars are a UX abomination.

Facebook is panicking and shooting in every direction.

[rhizome]

I don't think so. I think they're backgrounding (side-bar'ing) random friend activity and designating the center stream for capital-c Content. Subscriptions, active threads, messaging from Like'd entities...the center box is commerce-oriented, the sidebar is for communications and for contributing to entities (comments, photos, statuses, etc.) defined as candidates for the center stream.

I believe that the center stream will be where the half-page forced-Chevrolet ad is going to go, the changes of late all point in this direction. Think: monetization and profit.

[tmcneal]

Along those same lines, I'd bet that the floating section was added to get more eyeballs looking on the right side of the screen where the ads are.

[rhizome]

I'd say that along those lines, one aspect of the purpose of the sections is that the center is long-form attention and the right sidebar is short-form "constant check" attention.

And just to put the button on it: I fully believe that FB is at least this cynical when it comes to the design of the page.

[danso]

As someone else has already replied, this layout minimizes the managing of friends, at least in terms of prioritizing who you want to see most of. The curation seems to be based on how much you interact with another user. By definition, your best friends on FB are the ones you interact with most, or at least whose profiles you peruse the most often. And so with FB's curation algorithm, you don't have to generate a best friends list.