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Facebook rumored to launch redesigned, content-specific News Feeds on Thursday

Facebook rumored to launch redesigned, content-specific News Feeds on Thursday

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fb new newsfeed invite
fb new newsfeed invite

Facebook has invited the press to "come see a new look for News Feed" this Thursday and apparently that new look will include broken-out feeds for different types of content like photos or music along with a cleaner design that features larger images — and probably larger ads. TechCrunch reports that sources say the changes will be revealed on Thursday, but it may debut first on the full website and only later on mobile. Users will reportedly be able to toggle between the different feeds by hitting buttons at the top of the feed (instead of finding them buried in a sidebar), and that within these feeds there will be less "navigation chrome" surrounding the content.

A Photos Feed and Music Feed will apparently be most prominent, with photos showing images both from Facebook itself and Instagram — possibly with a "full-screen" option. The Music Feed, meanwhile, is said to expand beyond the currently-available listing of what your friends are listening to and include information about nearby concerts and updates directly from artists. Details are less clear on what's rumored to be coming on the interface side of things, though both photos and ads will apparently be larger.

Alongside Graph Search, the rumored changes would amount to Facebook giving users finer-grained control over what content they will see. Facebook's several UI changes over the past few years have elicited complaints from users who didn't like the new way. The News Feed is still the most important of the three pillars of Facebook's product (the other two being Timeline and Graph Search), so any changes will need to be rolled out carefully.