New York — Ahead of its f8 developer conference scheduled on Thursday, world popular social media outfit Facebook is launching a series of modifications to the News Feed that keeps you apprised of the most important updates, as well as unleashed a new “Ticker” service for real-time commenting.
The company is hardly wasting any time, they have already included the subscribe button, new friends list options and new sharing controls. However, moving forward, now they have announced changes to how the news feed works and the ticker feature that they have been testing for a while to the user experience out there ahead of time.
Moving forward, the news feed will focus on the most “interesting stories,” Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.
He likened it to a newspaper, which quickly tip-off you into the most interesting stories. “In the past, News Feed has not worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it is tough to focus on what matters most,” but now, the news feed will be “more like your own personal newspaper.”
The changes, which will begin rolling out Tuesday night, are meticulously designed to keep you always up to date on the important events in your friends’ lives, even if you have not logged in for a few days. “Today’s updates are about not missing important updates in News Feed,” Facebook News Feed Product Manager Keith Schacht, reportedly said to Mashable.
To accomplish this, it has removed the “Top Stories” and “Most Recent” links on the top of the News Feed and replaced it with a smarter feed that adjusts content based on the last time you checked it. If you have not been on Facebook for three days, it will pull out the top stories from your network. This means you would not miss important relationship status changes, photos or big life events.
The news feed will now display content based on your Facebook visiting habits. Facebooks Tonkelowitz explains:
When you pick up a newspaper after not reading it for a week, the front page quickly clues you into the most interesting stories. In the past, News Feed has not worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it is tough to zero in on what matters most.
Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You would not have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you have not visited Facebook for a while, the first things you will see are top photos and statuses posted while you have been away. They are marked with an easy-to-spot blue corner.
Besides, if you are a more frequent visitor of Facebook, your News Feed will be bundled with more recent content in chronological order. The social media network is also giving you the ability to tweak the top stories in your News Feeds by marking or unmarking updates as a “Top Story”.
Interestingly, the second change is more engrossing and affects how photos are displayed in the News Feed. Simply put, photos will be larger and more prominent. This was one of the top user feature requests. The goal was to bring photos front and center and make them even more beautiful.
“It is just an incredibly popular form of content,” Schacht says.
Lastly, the final update Facebook is presenting out is the new “Ticker” option, above the chat column on the right-hand side, allows users to comment in real-time. “Until now, there has not been an easy way to see and chat with your friends about photos, articles, and other things that they were posting in real-time. The new ticker helps you do just that,” Tonkelowitz said.
To comment, click a particular box and ticker will bring up that content in a hover window on the page, just type right there without losing your place, Facebook said. If you have a big screen, you can customize how many updates you see at one time.
Schacht says that this results in instant conversations. “By displaying what is happening right now anywhere on the site, we are creating shared experiences with your friends,” he says.
Moreover, Facebook will likely talk about these and other recent updates at f8 on Thursday. The company today unveiled the lineup for the conference, and scheduled appearances from Spotify and Turntable.fm execs appear to confirm rumors of a Facebook media service.
Moving forward, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take the stage during a 90-minute keynote that kicks off at 10 am Pacific on Thursday, but afternoon break-out sessions will explore the future of digital music, mobile + social, the rise of social gaming, and investing in social.
Check out the video of the new features below:
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