Status Update: Thousands of users of the popular social networking site Facebook are joining forces to protest the site’s new design.

After Facebook’s new look was unmasked in July, users were given the opportunity to try out the new design and give feedback to the site’s administrators before the changes were made permanent this month. While many users are unaffected by the site’s redesign, other are adamant that the changes are unnecessary, confusing and restrictive.

“Your fans’ hearts are breaking,” one student posted on the site. “The new Facebook, like everyone else said, is confusing and hectic.”

The newest phase of reforms aims to make the site more organized and practicable.

“When we set out to update Facebook, we tried to keep three things in mind,” said Product Manager Mark Slee in a recent news post. “First of all, we wanted to make the site clean and simple by reducing clutter, we wanted to give you more control over your profile and we wanted to focus on the recent and relevant content on the site.”

Unlike the site’s former look, the “New Facebook” consolidates news, updates and personal correspondence on one screen. At the same time, separate “Profile,” “Wall” and “Info” tabs catalog information into organized sections.

“One of our key goals of this project has always been to make the site simpler and cleaner,” said Slee. “That said, we know it can be hard to get used to things being in different places, which is why we wanted to make it easy for you to switch back and forth for a little while, in order to learn where everything went, and how the new site works.”

Despite Facebook’s pledge to develop a more user-friendly format, thousands of the site’s 100 million members are dissatisfied with the new design.

“I am so confused,” said junior Hillary Fairbanks. “It simplifies things, but I feel like I don’t have the time to sit down and actually see what the differences are.”

In response to negative feedback, founder Mark Zuckerberg reminded users that change is an inevitable consequence of technological progress.

“Many people disliked ‘News Feed’ at first,” he said in a post last week. “Now it’s one of the most important parts of Facebook. We think the new design can have the same effect.”

Adds junior Ty Whittier, “People are just used to going to the old site over and over again. The new site is more integrated…Once users get the muscle memory down, it too will become part of the pantheon of time-wasting activities.”