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Facebook reveals mobile-inspired News Feed

Kathryn McConnachie
By Kathryn McConnachie, Digital Media Editor at ITWeb.
Johannesburg, 07 Mar 2013
In keeping with Facebook's new mobile-first strategy, the redesign has focused on creating a uniform experience across devices.
In keeping with Facebook's new mobile-first strategy, the redesign has focused on creating a uniform experience across devices.

Facebook has taken the wraps off a new design for the News Feed, which is aimed at reducing clutter and creating a consistent experience across all screens and devices.

Speaking at a press event, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the News Feed is one of Facebook's most important services. He added the intention is to offer what he calls "the best personalised newspaper".

"We believe there's an important place for a personalised newspaper. While there are many social apps for sharing one type of content, there is a space for one service which spans all content types," said Zuckerberg.

According to Zuckerberg, the way people share content has been changing, and as a result, the design of News Feed has needed to evolve to reflect this: "News Feed was initailly about just sharing with friends, but it has grown beyond that. Now 25-30% of all content is shared publicly. Users need a way to see updates from their friends, but also updates from publications and brands. The new design offers rich, visually engaging stories, a choice of feeds and a mobile-inspired consistant UI."

Facebook says: "We've completely rebuilt each story to be much more vibrant and colorful and highlight the content that your friends are sharing. Photos, news articles, maps and events all look brighter and more beautiful."

The new design is based on user feedback and focuses on clearing out the clutter and bringing stories and content to the forefront - giving images, videos and articles more prominence.

Notably, amid the recent chatter around Facebook manipulating the News Feed to show more paid content, the new design will also feature several new choices of feeds in addition to the standard News Feed.

The 'All Friends' feed shows everything all of a user's friends are sharing in chronological order, while the 'Most Recent' feed has also been adjusted to show every single post and action.

Other feed options include a photo feed (only photos from friends and Pages), a music feed and a 'Following' feed for updates only from the pages and people a user follows.

The navigation for the News Feed on the desktop now also features the right-hand-side grey toolbar which has become a familiar feature of the mobile interface.

Facebook says the new design will be rolled out to iOS in the coming weeks, and Android soon after. The Web deployment will be a more gradual process and Facebook says it will be rolled out to a small group of users first. "We're going to be slow and careful in our rollout because its such a big change for the Web experience. We'll monitor user feedback and polish the design before the broad rollout begins."

Users wanting to get access to the new design early can add their names to the waiting list atwww.facebook.com/newsfeed.

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