
Facebook's New Feed - mikeevans
https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed
======
lawdawg
Looks awfully similar to the G+ feed. Not that there's anything wrong with
that, just that its confirmation that G+ was probably heading in the right
direction.

The bigger (no pun intended) news here is the much bigger ads that are now in
the news feed.

~~~
georgechen
personally it doesn't reminds me of G+. It reminds me of Tumblr actually.....

~~~
magic_haze
Agreed. This looks very much like Tumblr's dashboard, only with G+'s color
palette.

This, no doubt, is a very deliberate decision -- especially after the flurry
of articles recently about teens dropping out -- but I still feel it
completely misses the reason why people are flocking to Tumblr in the first
place. I don't know how they managed to do it, but Karp and the rest of the
Tumblr team have fostered a culture there that just makes Facebook look
corporateish and slightly dull in comparison. I can't put my finger on exactly
_why_ it feels so, but there's definitely something going on there.

~~~
taproot
> I don't know how they managed to do it, but Karp and the rest of the Tumblr
> team have fostered a culture there that just makes Facebook look
> corporateish and slightly dull in comparison

Or maybe, people simply don't like being figuratively shat on and decided to
find something new as soon as it presented it self.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing tumblr here, it certainly played its role
well, I'm just saying that people have wanted out of facebook for a _long_
time and a lot of their user base is _just waiting_ for something new that has
enough of their friends to move to.

Facebook made it big with the wall feature, the newsfeed scrolling down your
page with your mousewheel showing you all the content and happenings of your
friends. When facebook starts to mess with the wall by:

\- hiding things (and charge to make them more visible, specifically after
promising never to do so)

\- adding ads

\- filling it with game updates,

\- businesses "like this 4000 times and win a prize" contests

\- X liked on page A, so here maybe you'll like this page B

Is it really no wonder that people get fed up, bored, and start looking for
something with the original feature that drove them to facebook in the first
place. And don't even get me started on all the other problems re privacy,
naming policy, and silent settings resets.

The reasons people are leaving are obvious to me.

All I can really say is: tumblr, I hope you're ready.

that and... where can I buy some tumblr stock?

------
jgw
Is anyone else getting really, really bored of the term "beautiful" being
bandied around _so_ much in this type of context? It has long ceased to mean
anything at all.

I understand the importance of aesthetics in design, but it seems odd to show
off the design under the banner "bright, beautiful stories" - surely that
depends on the _stories_?

~~~
joonix
Beautiful, amazing, and "super" are the three most overused and annoying words
that the young hipster tech community uses.

~~~
shardling
"hipster" is the most overused and annoying word that the "complaining about
things on the internet" community uses.

~~~
qwertzlcoatl
That's a really "crass" statement.

------
cristianpascu
They always try to make it interesting by making it sound like it's about
stories and people and stuff. When really it's about cats and food and silly
quotes of not so famous people.

~~~
nwh
Mine was all people reposting spam.

Share this and get an xBOX 720!!!!

I'm giving away 10M to whoever shares this!!!!

SHARE THIS AND GET A PLAYSTATION 5!!!!!

I got to the point where my feed was empty; almost every user was hidden.

~~~
coopdog
Who are you friending that is reposting spam?

That's the real WTF

------
minimaxir
The most interesting line of the press conference: "We're going to try
something new. We're going to put the news items in chronological order."

~~~
Cryode
It always drove me nuts that I had to repeatedly set my news feed BACK to
'Most Recent'.

~~~
rhizome
Maybe the fact is that most people were constantly having to set their feed to
"Most Recent," and there was little takeup on their special sauce sorting. If
the special sauce sorting dies silently I doubt anybody except the
implementors will miss it.

~~~
drivebyacct2
... and everyone that uses it and has no idea to click on the tiny 15x150px
area that exists to change it.

------
nwh
I wonder if Layervault is going to file a DMCA against Facebook too.

<http://i.imgur.com/h07jo3d.png>

~~~
LandoCalrissian
Haha, that's great.

------
icarus_drowning
As a teacher, I'm somewhat sad that text will be less important, but I can't
say that I blame Facebook for emphasizing images over words. While it might be
nice to tell 7th graders that they should be able to write because the
internet is based on text, it's always been true that any day that might
change. And it isn't like writing skills will be less important, just harder
to explain to insular children of the middle class.

~~~
qwertzlcoatl
Does somebody have a tl;dr of this statement?

~~~
dopamean
Or, even better, a pictorial representation?

------
trevin
Looks great with professionally shot, high res photos. Most of the photos that
will be shared out in the wild won't look nearly this good in the new layout.
Same thing happened with the Cover Photo.

~~~
cheald
Yup. We always have to talk our designers down because they use 9000x14000
pictures when designing layouts - the true test of a layout is whether it
survives a crappy blown-up cellphone picture in that slot.

~~~
mlent
So true, but hopefully, as phones -- which are replacing digital cameras for
many people -- up their resolution, such designs will look better for people
with a broader range of mobile devices!

------
MisterBastahrd
I don't like this trend towards icons without labels. They make things
prettier but don't increase functionality.

~~~
aw3c2
I deleted some mails on my phone the other day because there was a new flat
icon and I was curious what it did. Turns out it deleted the currently
selected emails.

------
methodin
What is it that facebook employess work on daily? I see release of new
features fairly often for something like G+ but rarely see anything from FB
short of redoing what they've already done. Is this accurate or am I just
unaware of a release blog?

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Don't know where you got that idea from. For Facebook's size I think they move
incredibly quickly. Also "short of redoing what they've already done" is
actually the kind of crappy thinking that leads to a feature-bloated, never-
launched, generally-crappy product.

~~~
methodin
I am interested to know what makes you believe they move quickly. Do you
follow an internal blog or know engineers? From the items the two other people
posted it does seem that they post quite a bit but most of it seems to be
about how facebook works internally or items their employees are doing for
other people (AMAs).

I'm not sure I agree with your second statement in this context but I do agree
with it generally in the sense that it is harmful. Obviously if one never
releases a product but runs through the rolling internal releases of redoing
items they've already done, then that can lead to an terrible negative-
feedback loop. For a company that is well-established, however, I'm not sure
the same rules apply. You don't maintain success by iterating on your existing
product offering and instead need to rely on either simplifying, speeding up
or offering new products/features to your clients.

One could argue that they are attempting to find alternative revenue source in
these rewrites, which would be a valid argument and one I could understand,
unfortunately I am not able to either confirm or quell that suggestion.

------
EGreg
I applaud this. Also want to point out that facebook and google are converging
-- google is integrating more social into its search
([http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-
ho...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry-
page-engineered-beautiful-revolution)), facebook integrating more search into
its social (<https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch>)

I'm glad we are doing something different, because these juggernauts are about
to collide and the ripples will be felt everywhere.

------
recuter
Great. It isn't Schadenfreude exactly, but I hope big changes ups (that they
have to make because doing nothing is not an option) like this accelerate
their decline.

I don't think Facebook will go away any time soon but it will become another
Yahoo and that can only be a good thing for the ecosystem in terms of
opportunities.

~~~
ryusage
Except this is a good change, from what I can see. I think it really does make
the site nicer to look at. Why would improving the site accelerate their
decline?

~~~
drcube
Change. Users hate change, period. Unless you were psychic and managed to
change it in exactly and _only_ the ways they were thinking of.

~~~
batiudrami
Meh, people will complain, and then they will get over it, just like every
other iteration of Facebook so far.

No one uses G+. I'm relatively technical, and have 40-odd friends there, and
the last post was from December 2012 (and the one before that? July!).

The problem with Google and social networking is that social networks
initially catch on by being 'cool'. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Tumblr, Pintrest - they were all initially cool, and got that market right. G+
has never been cool (nor, in my opinion, is Path). If an app is used by a
small group of people because it's cool, then it will grow. If it's used by a
group of techies because it's better, it will grow until (at most), it covers
the entire subset of techies. G+ isn't going anywhere, at least until there's
a major rebrand.

------
pyrocat
> Goodbye Clutter. Hello bright, beautiful stories.

Unless you consider inline advertisements disguised as posts from your friends
as "clutter", because uh, there will be way more of those.

------
ryguytilidie
"Great news guys! Bigger pictures!"

translation

"Great news advertisers! Bigger ads!"

~~~
Yhippa
Pretty much. Whenever I use it on my iPad that's probably 70% of the screen
real estate now when I open up the app.

------
return0
If you have been following facebook as a developer, you will know that these
changes affect the visibility of apps and third parties profoundly. It's not
discussed alot, but these changes are circular over the years; there has been
barely any innovation since the introduction of the newsfeed. This new sorting
they've been working on is the default from a few years back, and the
aesthetic is obviously a copy of G+.

Facebook may be considered a successful company, but the truth is that its
leaders seem to lack in vision and have the tendency to make the same mistakes
expecting different results. Zuck had some great intuitions (quick and
aggressive growth, treating all users as wannabe attention whores), but the
design of the product is circling around itself since 2009 at least. Their
platform became a huge success when Dave Morin was in charge, yet ever since,
despite the fact that it has been refactored a gazillion times, nothing
substantial has been added to it. As a developer of apps that benefit from
exposure to facebook, i brace myself for the forthcoming semantic changes in
their platform that is most likely to follow.

------
carlesfe
I have an honest question.

Does it give them tactical advantage to redesign their site every year? Not
that I'm against redesigns, in fact I think that they're getting better and
better, but I'm curious whether they do this for the users or for their own
sake.

~~~
nivla
One hypothesis would be to prevent ad-blindness. If you visit the same layout
day after day, after a while your mind learns to subconsciously detaches
adverts from the content, it will be like it doesn't even exist. New layout,
the learning process has to start all over again.

------
jonemo
Oh cool. A Google+ skin for Facebook?

------
mcphilip
I can see the Photos feed being an interesting Instagram like view of the
Facebook feed assuming it only includes photos uploaded by friends and not all
links to photos shared by friends (e.g. quick memes).

------
justjimmy
This is probably my favorite redesign from a major company so far. Very
minimalistic and clean.

Also can't help but visualize how Instagram will come into play, with such a
heavy emphasis on photos in this new update.

~~~
kunai
Minimalism doesn't involve hiding features, text, and navigation items away
where they're hard to find. Minimalism is about finding new ways to make
things simpler, not to hide things that were already there in the first place,
arguably reducing usability.

See _The C Programming Langauge_ for true minimalism.

------
jibbist
> Bursting With Color

Facebook know my locale is UK English, not US English.

A small niggle I know but these things annoy me!

~~~
MartinCron
And if they didn't already know, your use of the collective plural "Facebook
know" instead of the more American-sounding "Facebook knows" should tip them
off.

~~~
Evbn
Niggle is the true shibboleth. That word is illegal in America now.

------
kunai
Glad they finally got rid of Lucida. The typeface sucked with Facebook's
aesthetic; Helvetica Neue seems to be far more conducive to the new layout.

~~~
msutherl
Agreed!

The use of Lucida made the site feel very dated to the mid 00's, and it wasn't
terribly readable either.

Helvetica, especially with full-usage of the font-weights (from light to bold)
makes for a much better typographical hierarchy and a more airy feel.

Glad also to see that they're moving to a no-borders design and really filling
up the browser window.

------
jschuur
Announced in a YouTube video. I love it!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQHYQHnMk>

~~~
jschuur
Another video, more focused on actually running through the specific changes:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PW54Sm99ck>

------
ececconi
I'm wondering if I could be more influential with the words I write on
Facebook by posting pictures of sentences in a stylized manner.

~~~
nsp
Absolutely. Pictures have a much higher base edgerank. That's why you see a
lot of companies uploading a picture with their promotion, or saving it as an
image.

Source: <http://m.techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/> (see edge
types)

~~~
Evbn
Oh god FB is actively promoting this shit? (I guess it tracks user behavior,
but still...)

------
x-sam
lots of nice UX improvements, but right now somehow reminds me of Google+

------
jakejake
I think it's commendable every time Facebook has pushed through a major re-
design like this. They have a about the largest group of change-averse users
of any site. Countdown to all of the complaining and petitions that will
happen once people learn that their cheese is about to be moved.

~~~
robryan
The being wanting to hold on to the current design will be the same people
that hated the current design when it was released.

------
uxwtf
Finally. I was wondering if FB will even get rid of its cluttered design. It
took them so long... I like mobile first approach and clean user interface.

Looking on these screen shots
[http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetails...](http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=4367)
still can't get why some huge images overboard the main column (looks like
they have negative left and right margins) on iPad and mobile while other
pictures/videos have margins? It was already the case on iPhone, but on iPad
in the two columns view it looks worst.

------
garindra
If anyone from FB is here: is the live news ticker going away? I can't see it
in any of the new design preview pictures. I honestly love that feature and
would hate it to go away in the new design.

------
yvoschaap2
> Inspired by mobile

Interesting move to adopt a mobile UI to desktop users. I agree having a
cross-platform uniform experience makes sense but like YouTube, their left
sidebar feels out of place on desktop.

------
callil
They are actually coming into line with the internet in 2013. Universal
experience across all platforms? Awesome. New, clearer less cluttered
interface? Awesome.

I also think the killer feature is the ability to clearly filter your news
feed by pictures, updates, people you follow etc. Fot instance, I DO want to
be able to follow some celebrities and tv shows on facebook without them
cluttering up my newsfeed too much. Now all I have to do is select my
following list and I'm there. Ditto for friends + photos etc.

------
obilgic
Facebook will end up being a photo sharing site.

~~~
hisyam
Facebook IS the biggest photo sharing site.

------
BaconJuice
can someone post some screenshots on imgur please? No access at work =/

~~~
martinshen
<http://i.imgur.com/mp2QNad.png>

Just 2 pics though.

~~~
BaconJuice
soo G+? is this live now? or not yet?

~~~
macleanjr
They are gradually rolling it out on the web to users over the next month.
Then iOS, then Android.

~~~
umeshunni
Stupid question: What browser are they using in those screenshots? It doesn't
look like Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

~~~
BaconJuice
it looks like it's on an iPad default browser

------
HugoMelo
It looks so pretty. Oddly reminiscent of G+

+1 for the redesign

~~~
zacharytamas
+1 for the +1 pun

------
amy_seqmedia
The redesign really feels like it really will translate well to mobile, as in
the Facebook Phone. Instead of a grid of apps, you have a strip of categories
of information (feeds, events, notes, chat) followed by your favorite apps.
Then instead of a separate speed dial screen you have those user icons below
that.

------
PuercoPop
Apparently has caught on to the fact that most people nowadays don't like to
read. _sigh_

~~~
AdamTReineke
A photo is worth a thousand words. Cameras are ubiquitous, mobile bandwidth
can support it, and it's generally more visually enjoyable.

------
kenferry
The design of the intro page is interesting to me. There's a strong attempt to
avoid the "boxes in boxes" look that, unfortunately, facebook itself still
has. But on the intro page, the only frame is the the browser window itself.

------
ameen
Is Facebook actually featuring Twitter's Vine on their New Feed video?
<http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s>

Also, I like it better, more content / less chrome.

The Follow news feed filter was much needed.

------
buro9
I'm not even on Facebook, and barely knew what timeline looked like, but
having just read this I'm impressed... in part because it looks so damn close
to work I've got in progress for forums :(

------
newman314
Is there a way to block the ads on Facebook using say Adblock etc.?

~~~
aneth4
Yes. Use Adblock.

~~~
Evbn
How does it detect sponsored stories?

------
martinshen
Any thoughts on how this will affect FB connect stories (positively or
negatively).

I love Graph search, it has helped tremendously pin down who are users are
without using FQL or our DB.

------
JacobIrwin
Overall I'm impressed.

These new Facebook UI updates proves that... .nws_feedContent{-moz-border-
radius: 3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;border-radius:3px;}

can go a looong way to improve design.

------
instakill
No examples of how regular status updates look like...

------
ma2xd
Designing Facebook is like putting makeup on a pig.

~~~
rhizome
The pay's better at FB, however.

------
twodayslate
It looks like an improvement to me. I joined the wait list. Hopefully there
are not to many "I like the old design better" groups.

------
ww520
It's actually pretty slick. I like the small picture icons on the left of each
content pane as the content scrolling by.

------
nanook
That video makes it seem like they cured cancer or something. But no.. they
uncluttered the news feed!!

Is this really such a big deal?

------
swalling
What is that browser in the intro page? Are they just trying to be neutral
or...? I find it really distracting.

------
Dirlewanger
You mean all the crap I don't care about is now organized into categories of
crap I don't care about?

~~~
Kiro
Why do you even use Facebook?

------
mkr-hn
It's tumblrbook. I always preferred tumblr's aesthetic over FB and G+, so this
is a welcome change.

------
fmax30
Is it just me or does the side bar look a lot like the Ubuntu's Unity
Interface sidebar?.

~~~
why-el
It does, and the first thing I thought was: This person is trying out the new
Facebook design on a Ubuntu machine, yay!

------
dkrich
The most striking thing about this is its unapologetic rip-off of Apple's
product tours.

~~~
aneth4
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

Neither apologize.

~~~
minopret
I am neither, so I cite sources and add acknowledgments. And apologies. (Sorry
to go off topic.)

------
thechut
> Join the waiting list Sounds like building fake hype to me...

------
lukethomas
It's sad that this will be cluttered with sponsored stories.

------
Irishsteve
Good bye clutter... hello new room for more ads

------
vacipr
Another waiting list ? This is really annoying.

------
WilliamSt
How do you get it before everyone else?

~~~
BaconJuice
work at Facebook.

------
omar7769
tumblr did it first, and did it better.

------
volandovengo
if there is a view to just see the pages that you follow, this will keep
brands happy. Otherwise - yawn!

~~~
NoPiece
They did announce such a view, and it should make brands, as well is some
users, happy. I follow w00t, but only see the actual sales they post once in a
while, now I can see the daily deals daily.

------
webwanderings
It looks like a Wordpress.com Reader.

------
fakeer
Looks like Google+. Obviously obvious. Difference being, very few people
actually use Google+ Though I do not use Facebook actively, but I still have
my account and do check it a few days so the new/cleaner look is certainly a
welcome break.

Now, it depends upon what Facebook "pushes down the throat of this new feed".
If it's all the same but larger ads, spam posts or those app posts then
nothing changed and if it did, it changed for bad.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Ding ding ding! The _only_ comment, as far as I can tell, hitting the nail on
the head. For ALL the moaning about Facebook's ad revenue, I can't believe
it's not being parroted more.

I recently posted a status on Facebook, were most of my audience is tech-ish
people, and got an overwhelmingly affirmative response to the supposition that
the News Feed is increasingly spammy. I don't blame FB. I don't want to be
that guy bitching needlessly, but it's becoming a nuisance. Especially when I
get way more relevant information through G+ and Twitter. Frankly, FB is
becoming more and more about the Pages I like (which arguably, to some, is
already nearly spam) and random pages that FB is super desperate for me to
like. "Mediaite" anyone?

~~~
fakeer
Yes. Facebook is a business model where the money comes from legally violating
users' privacy which the users served into their platter with full consent. I
never ever blame them - though I don't like it.

Can't speak of the new interface, my account still hasn't got it. Hardly
matters. Because now I only check Facebook two a friend's contact details or
message a friend for whom the only medium communication has reduced to
Facebook chat/messages. Or maybe once in a while to make some smart-ass status
update :-)

Liking pages is inviting spam. I've stopped doing that. I keep my minimal
contact over there. With cell phone, email hidden from outside world and make
a point to check the settings time to time. I do not share photos over there
any more. I usually do it via Dropbox or just email it, if it's a few
pics(Google sees it then :P).

Google+ is a lot lot more cleaner and easier but unfortunately there's no one
else. I mean for me there's hardly 2-3 guys who share it and I am not
switching friends or making new ones to use Google+.

Mediaite is a portal I see. I apologise but I couldn't get the context or
maybe the joke was lost on me if there was one :P (non USA guy here).

------
nwzpaperman
Can't critique HN for it, kudos, but the problem is people are lazy and don't
want to read. Tumblr is just another photo sharing platform, IMO. Facebook and
G+ are running over each other to show display ads.

The fixation on better display ads is constraining creativity when everyone
should be focusing on making the Internet a productive place for individuals.

The economics matter and shape the UX and server side development.

------
rorrr
This is ridiculous. Currently FB limits your feed photos to 400px (horizontal
and vertical).

It looks like they are increasing it to 550px.

This, literally, makes no sense. Current monitors can easily support 1000px
horizontal, and, as a photographer, I wouldn't consider that quality.

Both FB and G+ suck as photo galleries. I want to see large beautiful photos,
not 550px thumbnails.

~~~
saraid216
Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I found out that you can use the mouse
wheel to enlargen photos on G+.

~~~
rorrr
I just tried it. Mouse wheel just scrolls the page up and down.

~~~
kschua
It's Ctrl + Mouse wheel

~~~
rorrr
That's just the browser zoom. It doesn't increase the quality of the photos.

~~~
saraid216
This is a demo of what it looks like for me:

<http://imgur.com/a/Mja3r>

Dunno what to tell you. :/ It does need mouse focus, but I imagine you tried
that. I did not need to use Ctrl.

~~~
rorrr
I was talking about the feed, not the closeup gallery view.

