Facebook introduced a visually richer, less cluttered and mobile device-oriented News Feed on Thursday, March 7th, 2013. The move was seen as the most significant changes for the social network's most recognizable feature.
Facebook's News Feed, the ever-changing stream of photos, videos and comments uploaded from friends, is the first page most users see upon logging in. The News Feed is one of three main services that the social giant is giving, along with search and user profiles.
The changes to the News Feed, whose look and feel has remained largely unchanged since its inception, include a division into several sections, with separate areas for photographs and music (which builds on Facebook's partnership with Spotify and other streaming services).
The new design presents larger images. The new layout also serves to better highlight Pages that users have liked, and provides info pulled in by services linked to others' Facebook IDs.
The desktop version of Facebook is not the only beneficiary of the new layout, as the social network is also bringing these features to its mobile apps as well to provide a consistent experience across platforms. The update is meant to be first released to a group of selected users, and later, to others once all the necessities have been worked out.
On January 2013, when Facebook introduced Graph Search to address inadequacies in allowing users to trawl for information across the world's largest social network, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said that the News Feed feature needs a makeover. Zuckerberg unveiled the redesign at a press conference in San Francisco on Thursday, saying the move was intended to "reduce clutter" on the social network.
Photographs, check-ins and other updates appear larger on the redesigned News Feed, which features a new left-hand navigation bar and separate tabs for music and games. Facebook that began showing ads in users' News Feeds in 2012, quickly proved a vitally important part of the business. The redesign now also gives more prominence to advertising.
The redesigned News Feed was built with mobile in mind to ensure that the experience would be the same on PCs, tablets and phones. This forced the design team to simplify the look for it to be as flexible as needed.
Zuckerberg said the Facebook's News Feed aimed to create a "personalized newspaper" for the site.
The new design gives Facebook a more visual look, reflecting the fact that shared pictures and photographs now have more than 50 percent of all content on News Feed, a 25 percent increase from November 2011.
The design overhaul is the most significant in years for Facebook, which has been under pressure to accelerate revenue growth while keeping users on side.
A new "following" page on the Facebook homepage shows status updates from celebrities, newspapers and other brands in chronological order - similar to the Twitter, the 140-character social network.
Reception Against Ads
Facebook said that the revamp means the social network now looks the same on smartphones, tablet computers and on the web. The overhaul, which standardizes the feed across platforms and devices, is designed to keep users active and interacting as well as appeal to advertisers, as Facebook battles Google+ for internet domination for social media.
The redesign is an answer to some critics who suggested Facebook had grown to look dated, compared to up-and-coming rivals like Google+, Twitter, Snapchat and Path. The reception from users to the changes would depend on how many ads appear in their News Feed.
The changes will allow marketers to develop more striking ads that are alongside videos, photographs and other updates in users' News Feeds. Marketers believe the News Feed is the most affective way to reach potential customers, attracting a higher click-through rate than sponsored ads on the right-hand side of the site.
The last major update to the feature occurred in September 2011. Since then, the company has incorporated ads directly into the feed and has shifted its focus to creating "mobile-first experiences," because more people access the social network from smartphones and tablets rather than using their desktop computers.
The addition of advertising, however, prompted complaints from users who preferred an unblemished stream of personally relevant comments, underscoring the difficulty in balancing advertiser-friendly formats - such as larger images - with keeping its over a billion users engaged.
Facebook and Google
The world's largest social network is moving to regain Wall Street's confidence after its Facebook's IPO that has frustrates investors, is now moving to regain Wall Street's confidence, addressing concerns about its long-term prospects - many of which center on an industry-wide shift toward the use of mobile devices.
Facebook shares, which are still more than a quarter off their IPO price, were up 2 percent at $27.99 on Thursday afternoon on the NASDAQ.
Facebook and Google, which both got their start on desktop computers, are now managing a transition of their products onto smartphones and tablets, which typically have less ability to create revenue.
The two Internet giants are also waging a war for revenue in mobile advertising - a market that is still small compared with the traditional desktop but that is growing exponentially.
In terms of overall mobile advertising, according to estimates from eMarketer, Google holds 53.5 percent share in 2012, all by the support of its dominance in search-based ads. On the other hand, Facebook had just 8.4 percent. However, in terms of mobile display ad sales, Facebook has 18.4 percent of the market compared to Google's 17 percent.