Facebook has announced its brand new redesign for its “News Feed” – the place you always see when you enter the site. The new incarnation reduces the clutter and has designed each story to be more vibrant and colourful.
There are now several more feeds compared to “Recent” and “Highlights”, including showing Photos, Music and “Following” – which allows you to see the news from pages you like and the people you follow (sort of like Twitter). The new design also see some consistency between mobile, tablet and web including having the menu has been fixed to the left.
So what has been removed? The chat sidebar is no longer there. It appears that it has been merged into the left menu. It was sort of expected given that Facebook Chat has been retooled as “Messages” and so having a dedicated sidebar telling you if they were available is no longer necessary. Also, you’ll still be notified by the header if you get new messages.
The Ticker is also gone, meaning that you don’t have to every single activity your friends do on the social network. And good riddance, it is essentially duplicating what is on the news feed and isn’t really that necessary.
The design will be slowly rolled out in the coming weeks on both web and mobile – though there is a way to get it early by adding yourself to the waiting list. They will also be rolled out to their mobile apps on iOS and Android soon after.