Facebook Will Launch Content-Specific News Feeds, Bigger Photos And Ads On Thursday
At a big press event on Thursday, Facebook plans to launch new ways to filter the news feed. These include a Photos feed of Facebook and Instagram photos, as well as a revamped Music feed of what friends …
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook has revisited feed filtering before, from its initial News Feed filters to a more prominent filter design in 2010. The planned content-specific feeds turn that navigation layer into a more explicit way to separate what people see.
The visual component extends Facebook’s 2012 effort to bring a larger-photo-and-text feed design from mobile to the web. Combining Photos with Instagram material makes imagery a central feed format rather than only an attachment to posts.
First-order effects
- Facebook users are set to gain dedicated Photos and Music views, changing how they move between general social updates and particular content types.
- Facebook and Instagram receive a more prominent shared photo surface, while advertisers gain new ad units alongside the redesigned feed experience.
Second-order effects
- Publishers, musicians, and other creators whose updates fit the new feeds gain clearer distribution contexts, making the format of a post more consequential to its placement.
- Facebook’s ad sales operation can package inventory around distinct feed contexts rather than treating the News Feed as a single undifferentiated surface.
Third-order effects
- If Facebook continues to organize feeds by content type, its core product shifts from one chronological-looking stream toward a set of curated consumption surfaces, each able to carry its own advertising logic.
The trend: Facebook is evolving the News Feed from a single social-update stream into a visual, interest- and format-specific distribution system.