Facebook unveiled a completely redesigned News Feed today. Just a year ago, the social network announced an experimental News Feed redesign but users hated it. Today’s announced redesign offers conservative changes to the traditional, but dated News Feed.
The most notable change is the left column where different features, pages, and groups are located. There’s new icons and elements you don’t use frequently are hidden in drop-down menus. News feeds for “All Friends” and “Groups” have been removed.
Content in the redesigned News Feed is bigger and visually striking. Facebook uses Helvetica and Arial throughout the redesign.
Facebook’s failed experimental News Feed released last year
The focus of this News Feed redesign is familiarity. “People don’t like us moving their furniture around, because you break muscle memory,” says News Feed product manager Greg Marra. Facebook realized users didn’t want to relearn how to use the News Feed, which influenced the conservative changes.
Graph Search will replace the traditional search bar for English users. Graph Search allows users to search for people and things with natural language. For example, you can type, “Friends who like Game of Thrones” to find all your friends who liked Game of Thrones content.
While Facebook has given up on turning the News Feed into a news destination, it hasn’t given up on the idea entirely. Facebook Paper is the social network’s attempt to turn combine your Facebook stories with news.
Source: The Verge
