Facebook launches new design for News Feed

Facebook, has launched a new design for the News Feed to offer users a more unified experience across tablets, mobiles, desktops and PC's. The new configuration would see users' feed based on content and give greater prominence to photos, links, etc.

The new design would not be limited to just one News Feed, content-based Feeds would come up as well, which have been named as:

• All Friends: A feed that shows users everything that their friends were sharing from status messages to links etc.
• Photos: A feed featuring nothing other than photos from users' friends and the pages users liked on Facebook.
• Bigger, bigger photos on the site: This change would apply not only to pictures shared by users' friends or people they followed, but to thumbnails, etc as well.
• Music: A feed featuring posts about the music users listened to, music that their friends listened to, information about users' favourite artists and what they shared on Facebook.
• Following: This feed would offer the latest news from the Pages users'  liked, celebrities, and other important people they followed on Facebook.

At the top of the page is a switcher with a list of feeds. The options would be available on mobiles too.

For instance, if users were following domain-b and shared a link, the Thumbnail for that article would get bigger. Also if a friend of a user added a new friend on Facebook, users would be able to see the whole cover photo for that person on their News Feed and not merely on hit

The new design was launched at the social network's headquarters in Menlo Park, California and seeks to get people to interact more frequently with the News Feed, the stream of status updates and other information that greeted users upon login. According to analysts, the new News Feed had a prominent, bold front page.

According to Facebook executives, the new design would make for ready grabbing of people's attention across a range of devices, from tablets to mobile phones to notebook computers. The design was intended to have the exact same navigation across all devices.

Facebook design director Julie Zhou said, they thought a picture was worth a thousand words but in the current (old) design that was true of around 500.

''I think there's a special place in the world for a personalised newspaper that can span the whole gamut'' of content types, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the event. ''As what we all share changes, the composition of News Feed should change as well…. We want updates from our friends but also from publications and businesses we care about, so this is the evolving face of News Feed.''

According to Zuckerberg, photos had doubled to 50 per cent of News Feed stories in just under a year and a half, while Page Posts had nearly doubled to just under 30 per cent from 15 per cent in the same period.