Today Facebook announced a new site design. The new Facebook site promises a cleaner and simpler design, along with the opportunity for users to preview and test the next-generation features and functionality.

Facebook is inviting people to use the new design and try out the improved features by navigating back and forth between the new and current versions of the site. Access to the new design will be limited at first and gradually become available to all of Facebook's more than 80 million users over the coming days.

"We've made the changes rolling out today in order to highlight the most recent and relevant information that users value, give users even more control and ownership over their profiles and simplify the user experience," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "Facebook's new design makes it a lot easier for users to share information, and we encourage them to check it out."

The new Facebook design will be made available to users at http://www.new.facebook.com/. In the coming weeks, all Facebook users will automatically default to the new site design when logging in at Facebook.

In related news Facebook just sued a german social network company called StudiVZ for "stealing" their current design.