The Buzz

A few weeks ago Facebook rolled out its new design. The tech crowd has been all over it since, bashing it on one hand and trying to explain it on the other. On the surface it looks like it’s trying to out-Twitter Twitter. But the more I play with it, the more I’m realizing it’s a sideways step.

Things like the Events engine, which people use to nag others about stuff they’re doing or attending, are buried deeper down the page. The oddly addictive People You May Know option, which gives you potential matches based on mutual friends, are moved upward. The stream of consciousness that is the status update, of course, is front and center, which competes with Twitter more directly now that it encourages people to use this as a primary outlet.

Facebook applications are still there; the requests are still piling up for me to throw snowballs and pass a beer. For those of us who already got used to using the search box up top to find a friend’s profile, navigation hasn’t hugely changed.

The fact is, the “stream” that now makes up the front page, while a bit disconcerting, isn’t all that big a change from what was available before. I like the fact that you can create your own streams to follow just certain people, not just preset categories. This makes it easier to hone in on the 10-20 people you might see more often, or follow more often, and avoid having to check individual profile pages as much.

But really, in the end, there’s nothing new — it’s just more of the same.

Facebook hasn’t been the addiction for me that it is for others. I have the Blackberry application for my phone, and it’s fine for checking quick things, and like E-mail or text messaging I can find out quicker when someone’s trying to find me.

But for the most part, other than having a promotional tool for some of the things I help organize, Facebook is really just the same thing it was a few years ago – quick contact or information about people you don’t see much. The stream just brings the latest news aspect to the forefront (even if latest news is that “I’m tired” or “I’m overslept,” depending on the time of day).

People want the old look to be restored, but frankly, everything’s still here, and whether you’re already on the Twitter bandwagon or not, this is where it’s all going. We might as well get used to it now.

As the recession drags on, more and more is being made of consumers’ efforts to stop spending so much and start saving. While this isn’t shocking by any means, it makes me think about some of the simple ways that people have been able to save money over the years, and wonder why more of us aren’t doing it today.

The simplest method, of course, is saving pocket change. My mom made a habit of this over a decade ago, although she only got it half right – she never would cash in the change as it built up over time. Once the change was taking up almost the entire kitchen counter, and after my dad flipped out about it I brought it to the then-new Coinstar machine in our area to see how we’d do. A couple of hours, six machine jams and over a dozen coffee cans later, there was over $1350 in change saved up. That ended up covering a family vacation!

My mom’s trick there, as is mine, is to simply not spend the change that accumulates. Whenever a new purchase is made, you always break a bill. I tried the same experiment myself and in about eight months time ended up with $400. She uses it as fun money; I use it as an emergency fund, tapping it only when necessary. (My change cup overfloweth, as you can see by this picture; I’m still deciding whether it goes into the “too easy to access” savings account or if I should just grab another cup.) Banks have caught on to this notion, most prominently Bank of America, whose “Keep the Change” feature will transfer the cents leftover from each purchase into a savings account. Same concept, high-tech twist.

If you follow the financial markets and all the articles that have come out over the past couple of years, the numbers show we’ve been reliant on credit more than we had ever been before in this country, and the aftermath is now stinging. The fact that savings rates are rebounding are a double-edged sword; we’re preparing for harder times, albeit a little late, but our spending less now means the economy’s getting smacked around even more. I know I’ve been doing my part to both spend where it makes sense, and clear out debt, while putting money into a retirement account. The trick is finding the right balance, and that’s why I like the change concept for savings – it’s not overly intrusive, and it allows you to focus the bigger bucks on other areas where your financial balance sheet needs shoring up.

Need a little more inspiration? Consider this family. They’ve been saving change they’ve found on the streets, floors, etc. for three years now, and have collected over $1,000 into their changepot. Since the money doesn’t come out of their pockets, the savings is done without any intrusion into their normal finances. I like the warm fuzzy idea of them donating all the money to charity once it reaches $10,000. Now it’s helping others, just for being a little more observant. But even if you simply did it to build your own savings, it shows that a little extra can build into quite a lot.