Software : News Feed will make sense again with multiple sections for different content

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News Feed will make sense again with multiple sections for different content Posted: Various Facebook employees, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, took the stage on Thursday to introduce another new redesign for Facebook's News Feed. Prominent among the new features is a series of disparate News Feeds that present specific types of content. These new, separate News Feed sections include feeds for music, photos, and games, as well as new types of feeds called "most recent," "following," "close friends," and "all friends." The sections will drastically change how users view content on Facebook. More choice and control Users can jump to any different feed using the feed switcher at the top of the News Feed. Notably for old school Facebook users, the new "all friends" feed will simply display all of your friends' updates in chronological order. That's how the News Feed used to work, and no doubt some users will appreciate the comeback. "We really heard from people that they wanted more choice and more control over the stories that they see," Facebook's vice president of product, Chris Cox, said onstage. For users who want to see all the music or photos that their friends and "Liked" pages are displaying, those sections will do just that. The music feed displays concert events, music news and photos, and the songs that friends have posted about, while the photos feed shows you every single photo your friends and pages publish. The "following" feed displays all the posts from the public figures and pages that you like. Like the "all friends" post, this feed is in chronological order as well. Other feeds, like "close friends" and "games," have been adapted from existing features and will remain largely the same. The disparate feeds will be sorted automatically based on how much you use them. The new Facebook News Feed redesign will begin rolling out to a small percentage of users on the web today and on mobile devices in the coming weeks, with an all-encompassing release to follow.

Google+ aims to stay relevant ahead of Facebook News Feed reveal Posted: Not to be forgotten, Google updated Google+ profiles and pages with some improvements on Wednesday, one day ahead of an event at which Facebook plans to unveil a new look for the News Feed. Google+ Product Manager Sara McKinley broke down the updates straight on the social networking service itself, saying the improvements were user prompted. "We spend lots of time listening to your feedback, and today we're launching some profile and page updates that you've been asking for," McKinley wrote. The changes added to Google+ include larger cover photos, a new profile tab, and easier info editing. Google+ improvements The cover photos at the tops of users' profiles are now several times the size they were before, coming in at up to 2120 x 1192 with a new aspect ratio of 16 x 9. "This way, more images can be used as cover photos," McKinley explained, "and there's more room for your selection to shine." In addition, a new tab for Local reviews has been added to users' profiles, though users can choose to hide the tab if they want to keep their reviews private. And finally it's easier for users to edit their info, as the "About" page has been compartmentalized into separate sections with their own "edit" links. The battle with Facebook Google+ has been playing catch-up to Facebook since day one, and the latest update brings it further up to speed while adding some flavor all its own. Google recently added app Sign-In and Google+ Communities, echoing similar features already available to Facebook users. In January, Google's social network reportedly leapt past Twitter and Youtube in monthly active users, though the inexact nature of those statistics also raised some doubts. Now Facebook is preparing to unveil a News Feed redesign that could feature larger photos, new image-based ads, revamped feeds for photos and music, and new ways to navigate and search, at least according to TechCrunch sources. Wednesday's Google+ update is rolling out "gradually" and should be available to all users soon. We'll see how the changes stack up with what Facebook has in store tomorrow. It could make for an interesting battle of the social sites.

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