In the final days of our current Facebook layout, I find myself feeling mixed emotions about the next wave of changes. Part of me is reassured that the new layout will soon become second nature  and navigation will be no issue at all. For some reason, it’s this thought of reassurance that also bothers me. I’m still quite young but I’m not a fan of realizing how my parents must have felt my entire life,  the anxiety of trying to keep up with new technology. For example, I remember the look on my mother’s face as I tried to explain Google for the first time when I was in high school. I don’t remember exactly how I put it, but it was something along the lines of “Mom, Google is everything in the universe, like, literally everything, at your finger tips…on this 17 inch screen. Get it?” Her mind was blown, but once she got the hang of it, I got called at all hours to see what she just “Googled.” Voila, second nature. For the most part, I think the last few Facebook updates have been easy to slide into and comprehend. The most monumental change until now that I can remember was the addition of the news feed. Remember that? I’m willing to bet 90% of everyone’s first news feed was about how scary and stalkerish it was. Now how else do you navigate Facebook? Going to hundreds of friends’ pages everyday? I think not.

Which brings me to the pinnacle of my trip down Facebook memory lane – Thefacebook. It was the original. It was exclusive. University students only. No teeny-boppers posting their camera phone self-portraits in the mirror (that was still for Myspace). No apps. No parents to comment or “Like” EVERYTHING you do. No Like option at all. It was just your face on the top left corner, a minimal “About” section to the right, a comment area at the bottom and few options for finding friends and messages to the left (please see bro-page below). It was boring but it’s kind of cool to think about how different it was.

What Thefacebook once was...

Though the information available on the average FB page has increased, the basic layout has stayed consistent, until now. Yes, we’ve come a long way since those days of Thefacebook.  The exciting part is with the new timeline, I can use the new Facebook for my trip down memory lane. Year by year, even month by month, I can easily navigate all the way back to my very first wall comment. I haven’t switched to Timeline just yet, call me old fashioned. Just like I listened to cd’s until 2011 (when I was forced to purchase my first iPod and go digital), I’m going to hold on to my last breaths of old school Facebook while I can. Then I will embrace the new.

Amidst all these Facebook updates, how do I cope with the change? I listen to this:

…and of course, this version too. It doesn’t get much better than Maya Rudolph’s air drums: