Formspring.me, a popular social website which works with a unique question-and-answer format, unveiled a new look for its site yesterday, which has sparked comments about its similarity to the new Twitter interface.

Designed seemingly with egotists in mind, the site’s primary system is a function which allows anyone – member or not – to ask a specific user a question about themselves, their opinions, or their lives, with the prompt “ask me anything”, which can (and often is) cross-posted to Twitter or Facebook, to gain more questions. A ‘follow’ function, not unlike the aforementioned rival social networking sites, allows you to ask, contact, or smile at the people you know. You can also answer their questions, too.

“One of the most significant design evolutions in Formspring’s history,” according to the company, adds a top-screen navigation bar, allowing for instant navigation back to your profile or questions – saving those precious two seconds one previously used up scrolling back to the top of the page – and shifts the site’s layout to 760 by 490 pixels by default. Formspring claims that the new layout is suitable for all sizes of computers – desktops, laptops, netbooks and even tablets, like the new iPad 2, which Formspring had in mind when implementing the redesign.

Like ‘new Twitter’, Formspring’s resdesign presents the sidebar – containing your avatar, followers and ‘question of the day’ – to the right of the screen, presumably to ease navigation further. Unlike ‘new Twitter’, however, there has been no reported backlash. Twitter’s redesign of 2010 was not well-received by many users who opted to stay with the old Twitter, prompting Twitter to ask users to “switch to new Twitter…. or tell us why you haven’t.”

My response was, “ask me anything.”

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