Facebook today unveiled changes to its news feed designed to provide a more connected, better user experience. According to an article on Mashable.com, Facebook’s changes include three core components:

• Bigger images
• Multiple news feeds
• Mobile consistency

By focusing on creating a more visual design, Facebook is acknowledging the explosive growth in picture sharing and putting their mark on the current step in the evolution of news feeds and the social media dashboard. Mashable compares the new design by writing, “If you see shades of Instagram — or Google+ — in the new News Feed, you aren’t alone. We see them too. Facebook says it is following trends on where design is headed and it is clear that that trend includes big, immersive photos and a clean, navigable design.”

The multiple feeds option is designed to provide users with stories from a broad array of areas, similar to newspaper sections, and allow users to delve deeper into the subjects if desired. Mashable describes the feature: “As for the ‘feeds’ aspect of News Feed, users now have access to more types of feeds and have more control over how those feeds are displayed.
Users can subscribe to different types of Facebook news feeds, including from all friends, close friends, music, photos, games and those that a user ‘follows.’”

Finally, the biggest impact may be the emphasis on mobile consistency. Mashable writes, “Understanding that more users are accessing Facebook from mobile than ever before, Facebook is focused on making the overall experience more consistent, regardless of platform.” This should provide all Facebook users with a less cluttered, more visually appealing user experience.

Facebook plans a slow roll out of the new changes starting today. The roll out is designed to solicit feedback from initial users so that improvement may be made before making the format universal to all Facebook users. It remains to be seen what impact these changes will have on social media marketing tools, but we imagine there are plenty of marketing departments charging their digital cameras right now.

What do you think about the changes to Facebook’s news feed? If you’re ready to try this out, sign-up for the wait list!

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