Los Angeles – In a fresh move, it appears that users of the hugely populated social network Facebook may have to gear-up for some more design tweaks to their Timeline, as the company is looking for ways to simplify the timeline design. The social media leader is experimenting with some significant changes that are already showing up for a small number of users – and may roll out to the masses very soon.
Surprisingly, this latest, somewhat covert experiment that offer new ways of laying out user’s pages, was first uncovered by social media expert Mari Smith, one of ABC News’ producers Wednesday, as a small number of users are witnessing a sleeker-looking timeline, including a single-column design and buttons that effortlessly connect to the about section, friends, photos, and other sections of users’ Facebook profiles.
Smith, in a blog post Thursday, illustrated all of the changes:
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{japopup type=”image” content=”/images/stories/demo/2012/dec/new-single-column-facebook-timeline-big.png” width=”700″ height=”380″ title=”image” }Image Credit: (MariSmith.com) Click to enlarge…
More so, the new version is removed under a tab that says “More.” Also, the thumbnail pictures for “Friends,” “Photos” and “Map” (where you see all the places you’ve checked in or geotagged yourself) is gone all together from your front page.
Facebook corroborated the news today, saying that it is in fact doing some new experiment. “This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating timeline even easier,” a Facebook spokesperson told ABC News.
So what might be underwraps? Here is what we saw:
It is interesting to note that tabs are back with this refurbished look, doing away with front-and-center thumbnails for “friends” and “photos,” a move that may further bury some marketing efforts for brands that rely on apps. The result is a cleaner, bolder menu for navigation. In this design, your name is lifted into the cover photo as well. Having text over the photo evokes Twitter’s header images, implemented over the last month, which use the art space in a similar informational capacity. The text is white with a barely visible shadow behind it.
Apart from the above changes, there is a new “About” tab at the top of the page; click on that and you get all the information you have furnished to the social network about yourself plus your full list of friends. And as Facebook previously announced, the word “subscribers” is being replaced with the Twitter-like term “followers.”
Besides, your followers number will no longer be shortened once it gets into the tens of thousands. The “subscriber” count at the top of the profile page now shows the precise number of followers; up to now, if someone had 180,023 subscribers, it would not be shortened to a generic “180K.”
Keep scrolling and “photos” become available as well.
However, reports of a single-column timeline design are nothing new, as we last month reported that Facebook was testing a single-column design, but it appears that the social media giant has also restyled the cover photo and the tabs under the cover photo. Facebook did not comment when asked if this test would come to pages soon, too, but it is likely that pages will see a similar setup.
If you wish to fiddle with the latest design, the company offers a larger screen grabs, see Facebook album here.