Today’s Facebook news conference was about more than just a place to showcase a bunch of young Internet geeks showing off their hooded sweatshirts.  Rather, Facebook wanted to also announce an update to what Zuckerberg refers to the third pillar of Facebook’s ultimate ecosystem.  The first two pillars are Facebook Timeline and Graph Search.

Today’s focus was on the third pillar…News feed.  These changes to Facebook News Feed are meant to better compete with some of what makes Twitter and Google+ unique, as well as improve the mobile experience.

“From the beginning, our goal with News Feed was different from any other social service was trying to provide… You should be able to share any content that you want. Status updates, links, photos, etc… You should be able to share with any audience that you want, publicly, with the world, with just friends, or privately.  There’s no other social service like this at scale,” Zuckerberg says.

“I really think that there’s a special place in the world for the personalized newspaper…”

To summarize the Facebook Conference, there are really three main core features of the new News Feed: Richer story design, different cuts of your feed, and a consistent feel across devices.

Facebook News Feed Update 3/7/13 | Richer Story Design

Zuckerberg says that News Feed has primarily become about visual content. More than half of the News Feed has become about photos. The amount of content from Pages has also increased, from less than 20 percent to close to 30 percent. News Feed needs to evolve with this evolving shift in content.

Here are some of the highlights of the new story design of Facebook:

  • Photos will be bigger
  • Link previews will be larger with a much larger image and a more prominent title to accompany a linked story.
  • More info from the user’s Timeline to the news feed, so if you’re looking to add a new friend, you can see more about that person directly in the News Feed. 
  • Friends activity will be brought to the forefront.  When a lot of your friends share the same thing, you’ll see all of the faces of your friends who have shared the content, their profile pic and what they’ve said about the things that they shared.
  • Checkins will be greater amplified
  • 3rd party apps, like Pinterest, will be more vivid and similar to the experiences you’d get on other sites
  • The News Feed will also highlight events and news from Pages 
  • Facebook is also trying to better surface trending content.

 

Facebook Press Conference Notes 3/7/13|Different Cuts of Your Feed

Choice of Feeds for facebook“Sometimes you want to see every event that my friends are going to,” says Chris Struhar, Facebook Tech Lead.  “Or every photo my friends are uploading. Or all the music my friends are listening to… Now you have more control over which of these feeds you see on your homepage… You can jump to any one of these feeds using the switcher at the top right of the page.”

Here’s a list of the special topic news feeds on Facebook:

  • All Friends: shows only posts from your friends in reverse chronological order
  • Music: Shows what friends are listening to, new albums being released, and recommendations of artists you might like.
  • Photos: Just photos, including those uploaded straight to Facebook, but also photos shared there from Instagram or other photo apps
  • Following: A revamp of the Pages feed that shows every post by Pages you Like
  • Games
  • Close Friends
  • Any of your Interest Lists or Friend Lists

There’s now a feed that makes sure you get every post that your friends have made as well as every post from the Pages you’ve liked (somewhere George Takei and Mark Cuban are smiling).  Now you’ll know everything that’s going on from your friends and Fan Pages, very similar to your experience on a Twitter feed.

Facebook Updates 3/7/13| Consistent Feel Across Devices

Facebook wants users to have the same, consistent experience on their mobile phone as they would have on their desktop computer.

“A lot of what you’re seeing here is a very mobile-inspired web design,” Chris Cox, VP of Product, says. “The first is that it’s truly global navigation. You don’t have to navigate back to the home page to get to other pages on Facebook.”

Other than the topic news feed option and losing the chrome feel, the mobile hasn’t changed too much.  In fact, the desktop version of Facebook has changed more to be in line with mobile.

Don’t expect news feed to be rolled out too quickly.  Considering how slowly Facebook Timeline and Graph Search were rolled out, it’s no surprise that the News Feed will roll out at a very cautious pace as well.  For more information, please visit http://Facebook.com/Newsfeed

What do you think of the updates to Facebook’s News Feed?  Leave your comments below.