Facebook will hold a press event tomorrow in Menlo Park, California to announce something about its news feed. Here’s what we think they’ll announce at the event.
A feature and facelift for the Facebook news feed is much needed as it was updated last in 2011. Josh Constine of Tech Crunch speculates that Facebook may introduce “content-specific news feeds,” which means users will be able to switch between feeds for different content. Currently there are different types of content feeds but are buried within Facebook’s interface. The new news feed could yield better exploration of different feeds like Music and Photos.
More evidence for richer content in the news feed comes straight from the mouth of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
“One of the product design principles that we’ve always had is we want the organic content to be of the same basic types of formats as paid content, right? So, historically, advertisers want really rich things like big pictures or videos and we haven’t provided those things historically. But, one of the things that we’ve done in the last year is you’ve seen the organic news feed product that consumers use moving towards bigger pictures, richer media and I think you’ll continue to see it go in that direction.”
Redesigning the news feed would be beneficial for users and advertisers alike; users can find more content and advertisers can provide more relevant ads.
Bigger photos and a more eye-catching interface are undoubtedly going to be a focus at tomorrow’s event. Facebook’s rival social network, Google+, just updated its users profile pages with a ridiculously large cover photo and a card-style redesign. This shouldn’t be surprising as many companies are focusing on a more media rich interface. Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows RT has big, beautiful animated icons. Flipboard turns webpages into a digital and personalized magazine with big images and easy to read text.
Facebook could also introduce more gestures for the news feed on mobile devices. Currently, iPad users can swipe down on a photo to minimize it.
Nothing’s for certain but we will be at the Facebook event tomorrow so stay tuned!
In the mean time, let us know what you think Facebook will reveal tomorrow.
Source: TechCrunch
