As we mentioned the other day, we're setting out to improve our profile design. Our goal is to make the profile simpler, relevant, and to give users a greater degree of control.

Today we're going to give you the first look at the profile. We're still iterating on the final design, so design elements and names can change. However, these screen shots will give you a good idea of what you can expect from the new design, showcasing some of the new additional integration points.

• Expanded and interactive "Wall," where users can generate their own content, friends can write Wall posts, and applications can publish Feed stories
• Additional tabs on the profile, where users can feature their favorite applications
• Profile boxes, which appear in the narrow column, separate from the tabs
• Profile action links

Notice that the profile is wider and we're organizing the user's profile information into a series of tabs. The "Wall" tab displays everything from Feed stories (including application feed stories), to Wall posts, posted items, updated status messages and others. The recent activity on profiles is highly interesting information to users and we are relying on applications to provide stories that are meaningful and engaging.

The About tab is where users will keep their personal information, now in a more structured way.

In this example, Photos has its own tab, and similarly, users can create custom tabs for your applications. In this way, your applications will have much greater prominence on a profile, nearly at the top of the page.

All profile boxes will appear in the narrow column of the profile. We're providing other mechanisms for increasing distribution. And users can always rearrange the order of their profile boxes in the narrow column.

Profile action links get displayed by default. More can appear, and their appearance is based on user interaction with the related applications.

You can keep track of what's changed in the Facebook Developer Wiki. We've also set up a Facebook Page, called Facebook Profiles Preview, where we're informing our users of the upcoming changes. We encourage you to become fans of the Page. We'll be sending weekly updates on the profile changes to fans of Facebook Profiles Preview as well as posting new screen shots there.

Almost all of the existing FBML tags and API methods will continue to work. In the coming weeks, we'll be releasing a few more API methods and FBML tags that are specific to the new integration and distribution points. There will be a transition period for you to adapt your applications to the new design before we launch the redesign to users. We'll give you lead time and existing functionality won't change immediately.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Send your comments or questions to developer-feedback@facebook.com. Please put [new profile] in the subject line.