At a press conference held in Menlo Park Thursday Facebook announced a redesign for the News Feed its users see when they visit its site or use its mobile app. The new News Feed focuses on reducing clutter, making visually oriented posts like photos more prominent. It also makes filters for types of content front and center, such as dedicated feeds for posts by friends or posts by pages.
Facebook will borrow the menu format it uses on its current mobile app, which slides out from one side to allow users to navigate. Facebook asserts that this will decrease clutter on the webpage and allow users to focus on content in the News Feed. The separate feed categories (Photos, Friends, Following) will reorganize themselves based on which one users view most.
The Following feed, which contains posts from pages, will show “every one of the posts they make,” stated Chris Struhar, the tech lead of feeds. The prominence of this feed seems to be an attempt to quell the protests of brands that have pushed back against Facebook’s pay-to-promote posts feature. Some brands have accused Facebook of purposefully damping traffic to generate revenue this way.
Facebook has acknowledged that page post traffic may appear down in recent months because it’s trying to groom users’ News Feeds and keep the content interesting and relevant. Sometimes throwing every page post at them isn’t the way to do it. The company added a pages-only News Feed last fall, but it will make this more accessible by placing the feed alongside the other select few News Feeds.
Photo-oriented posts will now be able to be organized more like Timeline ones within a Facebook profile, where users can choose a cover photo augmented by several smaller thumbnails within the same post. Facebook stated that the change stems from the popularity of photos as content on the service.
The focus on photos could be a potential segue for the integration of two features important to Facebook’s future: Instagram and sponsored content. Recent surveys have shown that users are growing tired of Facebook and abandoning or deactivating their accounts. In many cases, the ones migrating away are teenagers who are heading to greener, more visual pastures like Instagram and Snapchat.
Placing more focus on visuals will make Facebook’s focus slightly more similar to these services. Facebook, which owns Instagram, still has yet to absorb the service into Facebook proper, but shifting focus to photos seems like a step in that direction. The integration of brands, pages, and sponsored content into a more uniformly visual feed will make it easier to blend more striking advertising in with users’ photo posts.
“Feeds support the different amount of time you spend on Facebook so you can get the most out of it,” said Struhar. He went on to say that Facebook intends for users to just “dip in” to Facebook with mobile devices, while spending “more time on tablet and Web” versions. Facebook has struggled in the past with users’ shift to using mobile devices and how to monetize content there. The new News Feed seems to be an attempt to stem the flow of users away from their computers and tablets, where displays are bigger and brighter and more engaging—better to display ads and sponsored content.
Users interested in getting early access to the new News Feed can sign up on a webpage on Facebook. The company still has yet to fully roll out its Graph Search feature, which was introduced in January.
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