It’s finally here – details about Facebook’s new news feed – released as part of a much anticipated press event on Thursday. This is the first major round of changes to the news feed since 2006 and it will take major advantage of imagery, in reaction to the fact that since 2011 half of all content in the average news feed has been pictures.
Among the most notable changes are:
- With photos set to make up 50 percent of news feed stories, storytelling on Facebook is going to be much more visual.
- The Facebook experience will become more consistent across devices such as phones, tablets and computers. Many outlets are calling the changes “mobile inspired” – which makes sense given how few of us simply interact with the platform from a traditional computer anymore.
- Users will now have extensive control over the feeds they see, such as feeds from all friends, close friends, games, music, photos and brands or individuals the user follows. This change will be one to watch for marketers, as how it will affect promoted stories and content is unclear at this time.
In the coming weeks you can be sure that GFM will be closely following the rollout of the new news feed and measuring its impact on brand pages. In the meantime, this article from Mashable offers “4 Ways Publishers Can Optimize for Facebook’s New News Feed.” Let’s just say that images play a large part!
The new news feed will rollout in the coming days and weeks – but click here to get yourself toward the front of the line. And – if you’ve already got the new news feed, we’d love to hear from you! What do you think?
