Facebook's major changes to Newsfeed

Our Head of Social, Nathalie Coulibeuf (@glueberrybaker), gives us the low-down on Facebook’s changes to Newsfeed, announced yesterday.

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There are three big changes:

-         Richer stories

-         Choice of feed

-         Consistency across desktop and mobile

One of the main changes is to the prominence of the ads (bigger). The newsfeed is becoming larger, so a sponsored post will become the largest element on the screen, especially on a mobile where it may take up approximately half of the screen. It will be interesting to see how users react to this change as it could be perceived as too intrusive or spammy. That’s the reason the importance of content associated with very precise targeting will be even more essential. An integrated content strategy (paid, owned and earned) has never been more crucial.

A new “following” page has been added enabling users to see all the posts in chronological order from pages they have liked (brand, newspaper, artists). This means that the Facebook algorithm won’t select which posts a user is able to see, and the user is more in control of their page. Different feeds have been created (music, friends, games…) where you can also see all the posts. The brand logo or publisher will also be more prominent within each piece of content.

Another interesting feature is the auto-generated maps when location is mentioned in a post.

Finally, the design has been created based on mobile experience, and the user will be able to see the same thing on a laptop and a mobile/tablet. It’s also good in terms of mobile advertising to have consistency and offers better interaction for users. Behind the scenes, one of the reasons for Facebook to focus on mobile is also to increase their market share in mobile advertising to compete against Google.

You can already join a waiting list to try the web version. The new version will be on mobile devices in the coming weeks.

 

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