If I was grading the design as a teacher, I'd give the experimental layout a solid B, and the current design a D-. Users will enjoy Facebook more once the company rolls out the redesign.

The decision by Facebook and other companies (below) to both ignore centuries of content design best practices and the entire history of online content streams exposes the hubris of Silicon Valley, which favors change -- any change -- over the status quo.

It also reveals a decision-making process by a certain type of Silicon Valley company. I've worked with many valley startups and I've occasionally encountered software developers who reason that because coding is "harder" than anything else in the company, programmers are "smarter" than their co-workers. Because they believe they're smarter, they reason that they are better able to solve design, marketing and other problems better than specialists in those areas.

In some engineering-driven Silicon Valley companies, you end up with an internal culture where software engineers overrule designers on design, marketers on marketing and so on.