Facebook tries hip makeover

11 years ago | Posted in: Technology | 472 Views

FACEBOOK doesn’t want to be dismissed as an internet has-been before its social network even enters its adolescence.

In an effort to remain hip, it is infusing the focal point of its website with a more dynamic look and additional controls designed to empower its 1 billion users to sort streams of photos and other material into more organised sections that appeal to their personal interests.

The changes unveiled on Thursday (Friday, Australian time) are a bid to address complaints that Facebook’s hub – the News Feed – is degenerating into a jumble of monotonous musings and disjointed pictures.

This has come as users’ social circles have widened from a few dozen people to an unwieldy assortment of friends, family, businesses, celebrities, co-workers and fleeting acquaintances.

That evolution requires a more nuanced approach than the computer-generated algorithms that Facebook has been relying on to pick out the most relevant content to display in each user’s News Feed.

The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers equipped with high-quality cameras also is turning the News Feed into a more visual gallery, another shift that Facebook is tackling by carving out more space to display photos and video.

Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes the makeover turns the News Feed into something like a newspaper tailored to fit the particular interests of each user on every visit to the website.

“This gives people more power to dig deeper into the topics they care about,” Zuckerberg said while discussing the makeover at Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters.

Although Zuckerberg didn’t say it, the overhaul also appears to be aimed at carving out more space to show larger and more compelling ads within the News Feed as Facebook seeks to boost its revenue and stock price.

Previous tweaks to the News Feed have triggered howls of protest among Facebook’s users. Hoping to minimise the grousing this time around, Facebook intends to roll out the changes in phases.

It will probably be at least six months before everyone who accesses Facebook on a personal computer sees the revamped News Feed, the company said.

New mobile applications featuring the changes should be released within that time frame too.

The transition is likely to be completed before Facebook celebrates its 10th birthday next February.

The facelift is likely to be more jarring for those who only visit Facebook on a PC because it incorporates some features already deployed in the social network’s mobile applications for smartphones and tablet computers.

The new features will enable users to choose to see streams of content that may feature nothing but photos or posts from their closest friends, family members or favourite businesses. Or they can just peruse content about music, or sports, as if they were grabbing a section of a newspaper.

Other newspaper-like changes will include lists of events that users’ social circles have flagged for the upcoming weekend and other summaries meant to resemble a table of contents.

Facebook still intends to rely on algorithms to select some material to feature on the main part of the News Feed, much like newspaper editors determine what goes on the front page.

The additional space being devoted to photos and video is an acknowledgment how dramatically the composition of Facebook’s content has changed during the past 16 months.

About 50 per cent of the posts on News Feed now include a photo or video now, up from 25 per cent in November 2011, according to Facebook’s data.

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