Facebook has begun introducing a new home page redesign to about 20% of the total 400 million ‘users’ of the social media platform. It appears as if the gist of the changes are just moving certain elements to different parts of the page so they can get more attention from users. More usage of the functionality means more stickiness means more opportunities to make cash. It’s that simple. Inside Facebook tells us

First off, a lot more people are engaging with notifications in the new design, Facebook’s Peter Deng tells us, which isn’t surprising since it’s at the top left-hand side of the site instead of the right hand of the bottom toolbar. Notifications for third parties will appear within the new interface for the rest of the month, until Facebook removes them on March 1.

Matthew Sanders put together a good group of photos here. While there are other changes on the way you have to like the way Mark Zuckerberg promises what is coming down the pike by saying:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also tells us that the company is planning to roll out “something cool” every month from now on, but no word on what products we’ll see.

Is this the new leadership way? Tell people something that gets them interested but provide no real information about it or no road map? While I trust that Facebook is going to be innovating (they have to in order to figure out ways to get more cash from the service) we’ll sit back and relax until something actually happens rather than get all revved up about ‘the next big thing’.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports on one project that a Facebooker was willing to leak. It’s called Project Titan and it is a full blown webmail application for the service.

Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan. Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.

That’s some big talk about being a Gmail killer. The folks at Facebook should relax a bit on the hyperbole but hey you aren’t one of the cool kids these days if you aren’t taking swings at Google or having Google take swings at you, right?

So here’s to innovation at Facebook. So far it’s 20% of their accounts having a homepage redesign and the prospect of a webmail service and the promise of monthly improvements. Part of me is interested and another part of me wants to yawn.