Mark Zuckerberg unveiled on Thursday a new design conceiving Facebook’s news feed as a more visually oriented, personalized experience that the company says will give users better control over what they can see on their homepage.
Speaking at the company’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, Zuckerberg described the new news feed as “the best personalized newspaper” for users.
The feed design appears to also take cues from Twitter’s user interface so that Facebook users can more easily see posts from musicians, public figures or news sources they follow. A dedicated photo feed lets users see only image posts, and a “most recent” post feed shows posts by friends in chronological order.
Zuckerberg also traced the evolution of news feed since 2011, noting that now roughly 50 percent of the content is image rather than text-based. He emphasized that the revamped version will focus on stories that are visually engaging “your choice of different feeds, and a mobile-inspired consistent” user interface.
Design Director Julie Zhou described how, as a fan of Taylor Swift, more personalized articles about the artist will surface in her news feed. She explained that the new design puts photos “front and center” and gives prominence to videos or links that have been liked or commented on by friends.
Chris Cox, vp product at Facebook, said that the new design will be rolled out on the Web today and on mobile over the next few weeks. As the news feed becomes more “polished,” it will be rolled out more broadly, he said. A waitlist to be one of the users able to see the new tweaks before they become widely available can be found here.
Below is a preview of the new news feed design.
