A new Facebook news feed design wants to be your ‘best possible newspaper’
As expected Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled a new Facebook News feed, aimed at streamlining the way that information is displayed, and discovered while you are on Facebook. Here are the details.
The press-event which was held today in Menlo Park, California was dedicated to a new Facebook design which will be integrated across all platforms. In a press-conference Zuckerberg stated that Facebook is trying to “give everyone in the world, the best possible newspaper we can”. The idea is to create a personal newspaper, showing you the content that you are interested in while exposing you to new content based on your likes and friends. Zuckerberg told the press that the new design will, “enable you to drill into any topic that you want”. This means that the news feed will splinter off into topics and sections just like a newspaper would.
Media like photos, videos and music will play a new role in the redesign. Facebook users will be able to focus on pictures, new content and multimedia like never before. You will have the ability to search posts by user, and even read their posts in chronological order instead of being hit with thier wall of miscellaneous posts, replies and articles. Another new feature is the ‘follow’ button for individuals, much like the ‘follow’ button currently works on Facebook pages. One of the best features of the follow button is that you can follow people without being their friends, making your friends more personal and safer.
A new menu will be displayed on the lefthand side at all times, giving you easy access to all of Facebook’s features, and this time Facebook is attempting to showcase the same design across all platforms, instead of having multiple layouts across desktops, phones and tablets like they do now. The new layout should begin later today for a select group of people, which will grow as the weeks go on. The mobile version of the site will not be ready for a few weeks and will roll-out slower than the desktop version.
