Facebook’s News Feed

Facebook’s News Feed revamp: 5 things you must know

Facebook has launched a new design for the News Feed. The design which aims to give a more unified experience to Facebook users across tablets, mobiles, desktops and PC’s will divide your feed into content based and give greater prominence to photos, links etc.

Here are five things you need to know about the News Feed.

Content based feeds:  In the new design, there won’t be just one News Feed. Content based Feeds coming up as well.

These have been named as follows:

All Friends: A feed that shows you everything your friends are sharing from status messages to links etc.

Photos: A feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like on Facebook.

Music: A feed with posts about the music you listen to, music that your friends listen to, information about your favourite artists and what they share on Facebook.

This is what the new News Feed looks like. Screengrab via Facebook.

Following: This feed with the latest news from the Pages you like, celebrities, and other important people you follow on Facebook.

The top of the page has a switcher with a list of feeds. Mobile will also have this option of different feeds.

Bigger, bigger photos on the site: This change will apply not just to pictures shared by your friends or people you follow, but in thumbnails, etc as well.

For instance, if you are following Firstpost and we share a link, the Thumbnail for that article will get bigger. Also if say one of your friends adds a new friend on Facebook, you will be able to see the whole cover photo for that person on your News Feed and not just his or her profile picture.

As far as upcoming events go, the Thumbnail size is much much bigger the design, thus ensuring that the events line up have a prominent spot on your News Feed.

Same design across the board: Not just the News Feed but the whole site is now going to look the same across the board, be it on your iPad, your smartphone or your PC/Desktop. For instance like in mobile and tablets, the desktop version of the story will have the “New Stories” pop up on top. You can just click on it to jump right to the new stories.

The left hand side bar menu that appears on mobile and tablets will soon be available on Desktop. Chat tray will get more prominent on Desktop as well.

Third Party content will get more prominent: For instance, if you share a lot pictures from Pinterest, they are going to get bigger and more prominent.

If you check into a place, it won’t just reflect as so and so checked in here, but a wide-detailed map will appear alongside as well. If you like or check into a restaurant, you will see the cover photo for that place’s page.

Photo Albums will also get a facelift on the News Feed and will get much bigger display with a larger boxes for pictures.

Links published by online websites will get a longer summary with the logo of the publisher in the corner, a bigger thumbnail for prominence and more space for summary.

When it is coming: If you hate this design, and think Facebook is going to get more complicated than ever, don’t worry, the design will take some time to roll out for everyone. Facebook is currently only testing it with a limited number of users and you have to sign up for a wait list here to get the new design. Be patient, it will take some months before it is rolled out to desktops. The Android and iPhone and iPad apps will get the new look in the coming weeks. 

Facebook states that the new design is aimed at getting rid of the clutter. But we don’t know for sure how ads and sponsored stories will appear on this news design. That is one source of ‘clutter’ that Facebook can’t afford to get rid of right now.