Well I don’t know what to think of this. As someone who is increasingly using Facebook as a PR tool for this blog (you can “like” my page in the right sidebar) and as someone who posts a significant number of photos, I’ll probably be helped to some degree by this new design.
But as just a personal consumer of friends’ posts, I’m already frustrated by how much scrolling I have to do to get past the clutter. In making the design less cluttered, Facebook might be ensuring even more scrolling. I also don’t like the references in Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks about trying to make Facebook into even more of a news dispersal site.
From the Washington Post’s Facebook to change news feed to a ‘personalized newspaper’:
Facebook announced that it is changing the format of its news feed to offer its billion users the ultimate “personalized newspaper,†with a minimalist design that places a central focus on users’ pictures, maps and video posts.
Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a press conference Thursday that the news feed should be more than just a single stream of content, and will provide a mix of wider world events as well as personal updates from friends and families.
“This is about getting Facebook out of the way as much as possible,†said Chris Cox, Facebook’s vice president of product.
Facebook’s decision to focus the news feed on showcasing larger pictures and videos is a reflection of the kind of content users post to the site,. Zuckerberg said.
Here’s a screencap from Facebook:
The new look will apparently be rolled out gradually.