Down in Menlo Park, CA, Facebook presented its latest update to the Facebook platform. Previously, the company revealed Timeline and the original News Feed as improvements to the usability of Facebook across desktop and mobile platforms. As the changes impact the massive population of Facebook users, the company is smart to present their new features and design in small parts. Last week, a Timeline update was announced without a release date.
Today’s announcement focused on the News Feed. While a great tool to view less important updates from friends, it quickly became saturated with content that was irrelevant to users.
Here’s how Facebook is going to fix that problem.
A ‘best-of’ personalized newspaper
This “newspaper” will contain a diversity of content that is socially relevant. It will be “visual rich and engaging.” You are given a choice of feeds that you can drill down to view specific content. News Feed will also contain better mobile consistency.
Visual Usability
The current News Feed displays only 40% of your content and cluttered with irrelevant information. The new visual design focuses on “Stories” about your friends. With this new focus, this proves a “picture is worth a thousand words.” Facebook used Pinterest as an example because it’s a visually rich site. Facebook wants News Feed to follow the trend of becoming more visual rather than text-based. It’s custom tailored for the user and can also show Facebook Events. The topics that you are interested in will show up in your feed. This will no doubt take information that Graph Search has learned about you from your search patterns and what you’ve “liked.”
Choice of feeds
Users are looking for more control over what content they want to see in the News Feed and have the desire to get rid of the “noise.” Facebook mentioned three types of feeds – Events, Photos, and Music but there will be more.
All posts from friends will be contained in one feed. One example, the Music feed will display all music news and related content in that specific feed. Feeds are located at the top so you can view the content you want quickly.
Consistent Interface
One of the goals is to “remove chrome around the interface.” With a mobile-inspired design, Facebook will be porting the mobile interface to the website. Facebook wants a consistent design that can be recognized on all platforms. A good example is that the chat bar didn’t work well on smaller screens. Another focus is that Facebook wants to encourage discovery by browsing different feeds.
While Facebook is excited about the updated News Feed, it is planning a slow roll out. Even though it will be available today, there is a waiting list to receive the updated News Feed.
The announcement today shows that Facebook is always working on improving the platform and the new design will bridge the desktop and mobile versions of the network. If you want to join the wait list for the updated News Feed, head over to the sign-up page.
Chris Park contributed to this report.
