This is exactly what I think has been going on, there have been some improvements I've appreciated (like how you can no longer screw up with html - leaving all posts to follow yours in BOLD, or Italics etc)
But basically they have made this site much more difficult to navigate, people don't have the time to be clicking through all diff screens to see whats important and what everyone's talking about.....
If this is a beta, please make us all happy and scrap it now before it drives people away!!!
If you don't, at least get rid of the Local/State Messages at the top of my screen!!!