F acebook design changes are a comin’ – again
They’re at it again! Not content to stick with any design for more than a few months, Facebook is once again making changes to its user news feeds. Withhold your panic for now – unlike the last big Facebook Timeline change, this one seems to have some positive improvements in store.
Designed to accommodate the increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices, photos and videos are getting a prime time slot. If you’ve posted a YouTube video, pinned a few items on Pinterest, or shared an article containing photos, these won’t just be thumbnails squirreled away in the corner of your page – they’ll be front and center in the News Feed, and the media content will take up a much larger portion of that space.
An example of the old News Feed (left) and the updated version (right).
The ability to filter, or select different feeds, is the other major component. At the top of the page, users will be able to select several different options, including:
- All Friends: a feed that shows you everything your friends are sharing
- Photos: a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like
- Music: a feed with posts about the music you listen to
- Following: a feed with the latest news from the Pages you like and the people you follow.
With these changes, fan pages should focus on increasing the frequency of posts while also integrating more photos and graphics. What’s uncertain is how fan page updates will appear in the new timeline, even though Facebook’s EdgeRank should remain the same. According to one article, unless fans check the “All Friend’s feed” consistently and interact with likes and comments, status updates from your fan page would only show up on the timeline if shared by other friends – even if you “like” the page.
However, Facebook has yet to address this officially, and it’s something we’ll find out when the new updates take effect over the course of the next few weeks.