Facebook News Feed A Visual Upgrade
The “Best Personalized Newspaper”
Facebook News Feed , HQ, Palo Alto, CA. 7th, March, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook team unveiled the newest upgrade to Facebook — The News Feed.
The facebook news feed is an overhaul that looks and feels very much like the Facebook mobile experience, but, with much larger images.
Back in January, during the unveiling of Graph Search, Mr. Zuckerberg stated that Facebook has three pillars: the facebook news feed, timeline, and graph search. In reverse order of introduction, graph search is newest, timeline is next and news feed the oldest from a design perspective.
Today Facebook announced the update to the News Feed. And it is a much much more visually rich experience. Here is the video
The big reveal is that users now have more control over what content they see.
Users can now select to views posts from Most Recent, All Friends, Photos, Music, those you follow (RSS icon?) games and groups.
The News Feed Selection is available for both desktop and mobile users. This is very similar to the Google+ ‘display which circle to get updates from’ feature.
Why Change the News Feed?
The News Feed is changing. Almost 50% of the content in the News Feed is photos and visual content. Mr. Mark said.
The News Feed has large photos, videos, and lots of visuals in the form of illustrations, graphics and images. Mark offered three areas of focus for the new News Feed:
- Rich Stories
- Choice of need – dig into any topic, and
- A mobile-inspired, consistent UI across platforms
The new News Feed incorporates some elements of Timeline directly into the News Feed. Cover photos and how many friends like it. A map and a description is included with the check-in.
When Do We Get It?
Sign Up here to get on the News Feed Waiting List
The news Feed’s updates will begin with the web beginning today, probably in the US, and roll out to mobile devices coming in the next few weeks.
The Graph Search announcement was full of surprises. This announcement was subdued.
The announcement did not explore how these changes will affect brands and their advertisement money. However, from the screen shots it is obvious images and graphics will play an important part in ads, sponsored stories, offers and events.
An improvement for brands is users can now see all the updates from the pages they follow.
1) Cross-Platform Experience
The new News Feed unifies the experience across all platforms; smartphone, tablet or a PC/Mac. The world is shifting quickly to mobiles/smartphones. And it’s obviously a priority to design for mobile first, then tablet and lastly desktop.
“A lot of what you’re seeing is a very mobile-designed methodology,” said Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox.
2) Content (images) are Massive in size
The new News Feed is about reducing clutter and offering users a much richer content experience — if its photos, videos or third-party apps.
You feel the Instagram DNA threaded through this newly designed News Feed.
3) Third, there are Personalized, Custom Feeds
Choice, control and content is the new News Feed.
Users can now select different feeds depending on their interests, à la the Google+ Circles/more feature. Examples offered are selecting followed pages, or friends photos or music your friends are listening to.
4) Third-party apps are Included in Redesign
Examples offered were Pinterest, that plug into Facebook, will avail of the richer content experience. This update opens the possibility for existing app to show off better content.
Without question app developers are dreaming up ways to use this added space to put ads in front of us.
When Do We get the Update? see this like to get on the waiting list. The Graph Search roll out is slow in the coming, therefore, I don’t expect typical users to get these updates in the next days or weeks.
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