Ever since the invitation went out from Facebook to “Come See a New Look for News Feed,” many have been speculating what that might be. Several anonymous sources have been leaking very good clues about what to expect at the big press event later today.
Most are certain that an option for multiple content specific feeds, like a photo feed or a music feed are coming. Since the big f8 conference for developers in September of 2011 a music feed has been available, but it’s buried deep in the app section of the sidebar and few Facebook users know it’s there. “In October 2012, Facebook added a Pages-only feed that only shows updates from Pages you Like. There’s also the recently tested “My Offers” feed and even a forgotten Notes feed,” wrote Josh Constine for TechCrunch.
Constine added, “What all these separate feeds have in common is that they’re buried in the sidebar navigation menu and scattered across categories like Favorites, Pages, and Apps. If Faebook surfaced at least some of them in a more prominent, cohesive way, we’d be a lot more likely to switch to them when we finish reading the main feed.”
The other big change to be on the look-out for is the format of rich media. CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself said the news feed needs to evolve to be more vivid.
Zuckerberg alluded to this during the Fourth Quarter Earnings Call:
“As our news feed design evolves to show richer kinds of stories, that opens up new opportunities to offer different kinds of ads as well…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. And, I think that a lot of the success of products like Instagram is because of that. It’s a very immersive – even on a small screen, just – it’s a wonderful photo product.”
Are you ready for the speculation to end and find out for certain how the News Feed will change? Check back with SEJ later in the day for all the details.
