Facebook Improves News Feed Design

Facebook is rolling out an updated news feed design that puts even more emphasis on photos and friends. Secondary information (“posted x hrs ago”) fades in the background but is still available if you really want to see it. I really like the new look, which I think make a lot of the text go away (Facebook can be verbose) and improves the overall readability of the site quite a bit.  What do you think?

Additionally, Facebook has added new feeds that come in addition of the one that you already know and use:

1/ All Friends is a feed that allows you to see “everything” coming from your friends. Needless to say that if you have a lot of friends, this can be overwhelming. On the other hand, Facebook is not filtering that one, so this is an option if you don’t want to miss anything.

2/ There is now a Photos feed, and I suspect that this one is going to be very popular. It’s much easier to glace at than the generic text feed, so this is pretty much a guaranteed success. Let’s wait and see.

3/ Music lovers can also subscribe to a Music feed, which does exactly what its name indicate… What to expect from this one largely depends on how active your friends are, but this may be a great way to discover new tracks.

4/ The Following feed shows what’s going on with the pages and people that you follow. I wonder if people really follow things that much, but this is an interesting experiment.

Facebook points out that its design is now consistent across web, tablet and smartphones, which is a really good thing in general. Although previous Facebook design changes have occasionally caused uproars, this one should make most people happy. Facebook is going to roll this out slowly, so if you want to get on it faster, register on this page.