FB News Feed redesign: is the era of the personalized newspaper here?

(Staff reporter Chang Yu-lien, Taipei, March 7) Facebook (FB) has become an indispensable part of most people's lives. According to the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) tech blog Digits, Facebook has announced that a major redesign is coming, and the News Feed, where users see a stream of photos, videos and links every time they log on, will be revamped.

Since its IPO, Facebook (FB) has been constantly redesigning to meet user needs and to innovate FB's commercial value. When FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in 2013 to make an announcement, he declared that he would turn the News Feed into "the best personalized newspaper." However, after some users tested the new look, a flood of negative reviews came in, and Facebook decided to withdraw that design, responding to the backlash with a smaller-scale redesign. In 2014, the all-new News Feed version was kept out of media events and instead unveiled in a press release. This differed from the version shown in 2013.

The new web version of the News Feed does not take the digital-newspaper form; it emphasizes video, photos and topics, and has been modified so that both its appearance and its operation resemble Facebook's mobile app. Photos are bigger, the fonts have also been updated, and the emphasis on visuals makes browsing overall easier and more relaxed.

Therefore, this redesign counts only as a visual update, not a back-end restructuring. Facebook pointed out in a blog post that this round of updates "does not affect the way we present content to people, nor does it change the basis on which posts are ranked in the News Feed."

The new version of the News Feed will roll out to all users in the coming weeks. Whether it is stable and practical after the redesign will only be known from user reactions going forward. 1030307