Posts
https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed
From slashdot:
"The company is redesigning its desktop user interface in a way which 'standardizes the feed across mobile devices and desktop computers, is designed to keep users active and interacting as well as appeal to advertisers.' According to the article, 'Greater emphasis is given to images — which are now much larger. Photos now make up nearly 50% of news feed stories and are now front and center. If you see shades of Instagram — or Google+ — in the new feed, you aren't alone. We see them too. Facebook says it is following trends on where design is headed and it is clear that trend includes big photos and a clean, navigable design."
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http://www.afr.com/p/technology/facebook_unveils_mobile_first_newsfeed_2r7kg0AoXm1OU7fuqNGnxO
Facebook introduced a visually richer, mobile device-oriented “newsfeed” on Thursday, in the most significant changes to date for the social network’s most recognisable feature.
The changes to the newsfeed, whose look and feel has remained largely unchanged since its inception, include a division into several sections, with separate areas for photographs and music. They will begin rolling out in limited fashion from Thursday.
The overhaul, which standardises the feed across mobile devices and desktop computers, is designed to keep users active and interacting as well as appeal to advertisers, as Facebook battles Google for Internet market share.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg had singled out the feature as in need of a makeover as recently as January, when the company introduced “graph search” to address inadequacies in allowing users to trawl for information across the world’s largest social network.
Facebook’s newsfeed, an ever-changing stream of photos, videos and comments uploaded from friends, is the first page most users see upon logging in. It is one of three “pillars” of the service, along with search and user profiles.
The last major update to the feature occurred in September 2011. Since then, the company has incorporated ads directly into the feed and has shifted its focus to creating “mobile-first experiences,” because more people now access the social network from smartphones and desktops than from desktop computers.
The addition of advertising, however, prompted complaints from users who preferred an unblemished stream of personally relevant comments, underscoring the difficulty in balancing advertiser-friendly formats - such as larger images - with keeping its 1 billion-plus members engaged.
Facebook versus Google
The world’s largest social network is moving to regain Wall Street’s confidence after a botched IPO last year, addressing concerns about its long-term prospects - many of which centre on an industry-wide shift toward the use of mobile devices.Facebook shares, which are still more than a quarter off their IPO price of $US38, were up 2 per cent at $US27.99 on Thursday afternoon on the Nasdaq.
Facebook and Google, which both got their start on desktop computers, are now managing a transition of their products onto smartphones and tablets, which typically yield less revenue than on PCs.
The two internet mainstays are also waging a war for revenue in mobile advertising - a market that is still small compared with the traditional desktop but that is growing exponentially.
In terms of overall mobile advertising, Google commanded a 53.5 per cent share in 2012, aided by its dominance in search-based ads. Facebook had just 8.4 per cent, a distant runner-up, according to estimates from research house eMarketer.
But in terms of mobile display ad sales, Facebook narrowly edges out its rival with 18.4 per cent of the market versus Google’s 17 per cent, the research outfit estimated.
Reuters
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http://mashable.com/2013/03/07/new-facebook-news-feed/
The new news feed represents the first major overhaul of Facebook's core service since the launch of Facebook Timeline at the end of 2011.
"The news feed is one of the most important things we've built," Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press event. Likening news feed to "the most personalized newspaper," Zuckerberg added that "the stories around you deserve to be displayed with more than just text."
"How we're all sharing is changing and the news feed needs to evolve with those changes. This is the evolving face of news feed."
The new news feed features three major components:
- Bigger Images
- Multiple Feeds
- Mobile Consistency
A New Focus on Imagery
The new look is a radical departure from the Facebook of old. It's mobile-inspired and consistent across devices.When it comes to the feed itself, the focus on stories is now much more visual. Greater emphasis is given to images — which are now much larger. Photos now make up nearly 50% of news feed stories and are now front and center.
If you see shades of Instagram — or Google+ — in the new feed, you aren't alone. We see them too. Facebook says it is following trends on where design is headed and it is clear that trend includes big photos and a clean, navigable design.
More Feeds, More Control
As for the "feeds" aspect of news feed, users now have access to more types of feeds and have more control over how those feeds are displayed.Users can subscribe to different types of feeds, including feeds from all friends, close friends, music, photos, games and those who a user "follows."
And, for those of us who hate how Facebook sorts news feed content, a chronological view is now available.
It's not clear how these new feeds will affect promoted stories and content or the longer-lasting impact it may have on brands and pages.
Mobile Consistency
The new news feed design was inspired by mobile. It takes significant cues from the Facebook mobile apps for phones and tablets, adding a new side navigation bar and more white space.Understanding that more users are accessing Facebook from mobile than ever, Facebook is focused on making the overall experience more consistent, regardless of platform.
The new feed will start rolling out today on web.
Let us know your thoughts on the changes in the comments.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Mobile Apps: The Trouble With Using 'Responsive Design'
Eric Savitz, Forbes Staff
Guest post written by Carin van Vuuren
Carin van Vuuren is chief marketing officer at Usablenet.
If you’ve recently chatted with your Web development team, you may
have heard about responsive design. A growing trend for today’s
businesses, publishers and developers, responsive design is an approach
to Web development that many brands are considering to optimize their
online content for multiple devices with varying screen sizes across the
traditional Web, tablets, smartphones and beyond.
Like any philosophy, responsive design is a choice, and a tempting one at that. Many pro-responsive developers affectionately term RD “one-Web,” which emphasizes the single set of code a responsive site is based on. This design principle utilizes coding language that responds to the device being used – whether an Android smartphone or an iPad – in order to display content relative to the size and orientation of its screen.
Amid an overwhelming amount of mobile options and solutions, it’s easy to see why responsive design’s singular code seems like an alluring universal panacea for mobile optimization. However, while responsive design aims to scale web content fluidly across multiple devices with different screen sizes, it may not represent the best option for organizations aiming to deliver unique and innovative experiences to customers.
A good example of this dilemma can be found in LinkedIn’s recent approach to developing its iPad app. According to Kirin Prasad, LinkedIn’s head of mobile development, responsive design doesn’t work for complicated sites like the LinkedIn iPad app, 95% of which was developed with HTML5 to target a specific set of user tasks. This approach allows LinkedIn to create different experiences on different devices based on use case and context. For the majority of sites that require an interactive experience like LinkedIn’s, responsive design limits the different designs necessary to deliver functionality for each use case.
So when is responsive design an appropriate solution?
When the only changing factor in the Web experience is the user’s device, responsive design is a useful solution. It works very well for content sites like magazines and newspapers, because content is simply being reformatted. If you’re accessing a publication’s website on a smartphone, for example, you still want to read the news, just smaller parts of it.
People magazine recently adopted responsive design to great effect in order to scale traditional Web content across screens. This works well for magazines and other content publishers, as users are coming to consume content, not necessarily to interact or search for certain answers.
At the device level, responsive design works best if the page contains the type of text and image-based content often found on publisher sites. However, content delivery on responsive sites has the potential to deter users. For instance, if you’re trying to deliver complex functionality built with CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, and other heavy Web development technologies, pages will be heavy and the experience will be dramatically slower on a smartphone or tablet. Time lost equals users lost, as page load times have a direct impact on your ability to deliver users a positive experience.
Beyond device-specific content display, the two other pieces to consider when designing your mobile strategy are use case and context, two realms in which responsive design does not contribute meaningfully.
Use case covers the driving reasons behind a user’s foray onto your mobile site – what the user is looking to do and how it can be accomplished on your site. Take an airline website, for example. When a user visits an airline’s site from their smartphone, they typically want to be able to do a few very specific things like check their flight status, check-in for a flight, or access local information related to their destination. The user expects a completely different experience from when they access the airline site from a computer, which more easily facilitates detailed flight searches.
On the other hand, the mobile user’s goals are often context-driven. In “The Future of Mobile eBusiness is Context,” Forrester analyst Julie A. Ask defines “mobile context” as “the sum total of what your customer has told you and is experiencing at his moment of engagement.” Because user experience and context are the new benchmarks of a mature mobile strategy, they should drive the decisions you make when designing your mobile experience.
Responsive design implicitly suggests that mobile is a subset of the traditional Web, but it is clear that people use mobile for a very different end. Consider what a user is searching for when accessing a mobile site. The user does not wish to browse on the same site that is available on desktop PC, but expects a different experience for different end goals – an experience that is fast, convenient, relevant and contextual.
Many banks have done a great job of optimizing the mobile experience to help users accomplish specific goals. This is why responsive design does not work across the board – it is not able to deliver the individual experiences, like the ability to deposit a check by snapping a picture, required by mobile banking customers. The limitations of responsive design in adapting for use case and context means that it is more hindrance than help in mobilizing distinct, device-specific experiences that impart user value, such as more complicated web applications.
The future of digital business depends primarily on mastering the mobile channel. Mobile’s mushrooming numbers are due to the convenience of remote access and a new reliance upon the delivery of information when and where little to none was previously available. When developing your approach to engaging customers via mobile, it is key to ensure your strategy accounts for the rising expectations your customers have for this important channel.
Once you understand the kind of mobile experience you want to create, you can decide whether adopting a responsive design philosophy can deliver upon these expectations and goals. While responsive design can help you achieve a certain measure of consistency across channels, the real prize lies with the ability to create unique experiences. A broader multi-screen approach designed dynamically by channel will enable the sort of customer experiences that yield higher engagement and contribute to overall success.
Carin van Vuuren is chief marketing officer at Usablenet.
Cairn van Vuuren
Like any philosophy, responsive design is a choice, and a tempting one at that. Many pro-responsive developers affectionately term RD “one-Web,” which emphasizes the single set of code a responsive site is based on. This design principle utilizes coding language that responds to the device being used – whether an Android smartphone or an iPad – in order to display content relative to the size and orientation of its screen.
Amid an overwhelming amount of mobile options and solutions, it’s easy to see why responsive design’s singular code seems like an alluring universal panacea for mobile optimization. However, while responsive design aims to scale web content fluidly across multiple devices with different screen sizes, it may not represent the best option for organizations aiming to deliver unique and innovative experiences to customers.
A good example of this dilemma can be found in LinkedIn’s recent approach to developing its iPad app. According to Kirin Prasad, LinkedIn’s head of mobile development, responsive design doesn’t work for complicated sites like the LinkedIn iPad app, 95% of which was developed with HTML5 to target a specific set of user tasks. This approach allows LinkedIn to create different experiences on different devices based on use case and context. For the majority of sites that require an interactive experience like LinkedIn’s, responsive design limits the different designs necessary to deliver functionality for each use case.
So when is responsive design an appropriate solution?
When the only changing factor in the Web experience is the user’s device, responsive design is a useful solution. It works very well for content sites like magazines and newspapers, because content is simply being reformatted. If you’re accessing a publication’s website on a smartphone, for example, you still want to read the news, just smaller parts of it.
People magazine recently adopted responsive design to great effect in order to scale traditional Web content across screens. This works well for magazines and other content publishers, as users are coming to consume content, not necessarily to interact or search for certain answers.
At the device level, responsive design works best if the page contains the type of text and image-based content often found on publisher sites. However, content delivery on responsive sites has the potential to deter users. For instance, if you’re trying to deliver complex functionality built with CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, and other heavy Web development technologies, pages will be heavy and the experience will be dramatically slower on a smartphone or tablet. Time lost equals users lost, as page load times have a direct impact on your ability to deliver users a positive experience.
Beyond device-specific content display, the two other pieces to consider when designing your mobile strategy are use case and context, two realms in which responsive design does not contribute meaningfully.
Use case covers the driving reasons behind a user’s foray onto your mobile site – what the user is looking to do and how it can be accomplished on your site. Take an airline website, for example. When a user visits an airline’s site from their smartphone, they typically want to be able to do a few very specific things like check their flight status, check-in for a flight, or access local information related to their destination. The user expects a completely different experience from when they access the airline site from a computer, which more easily facilitates detailed flight searches.
On the other hand, the mobile user’s goals are often context-driven. In “The Future of Mobile eBusiness is Context,” Forrester analyst Julie A. Ask defines “mobile context” as “the sum total of what your customer has told you and is experiencing at his moment of engagement.” Because user experience and context are the new benchmarks of a mature mobile strategy, they should drive the decisions you make when designing your mobile experience.
Responsive design implicitly suggests that mobile is a subset of the traditional Web, but it is clear that people use mobile for a very different end. Consider what a user is searching for when accessing a mobile site. The user does not wish to browse on the same site that is available on desktop PC, but expects a different experience for different end goals – an experience that is fast, convenient, relevant and contextual.
Many banks have done a great job of optimizing the mobile experience to help users accomplish specific goals. This is why responsive design does not work across the board – it is not able to deliver the individual experiences, like the ability to deposit a check by snapping a picture, required by mobile banking customers. The limitations of responsive design in adapting for use case and context means that it is more hindrance than help in mobilizing distinct, device-specific experiences that impart user value, such as more complicated web applications.
The future of digital business depends primarily on mastering the mobile channel. Mobile’s mushrooming numbers are due to the convenience of remote access and a new reliance upon the delivery of information when and where little to none was previously available. When developing your approach to engaging customers via mobile, it is key to ensure your strategy accounts for the rising expectations your customers have for this important channel.
Once you understand the kind of mobile experience you want to create, you can decide whether adopting a responsive design philosophy can deliver upon these expectations and goals. While responsive design can help you achieve a certain measure of consistency across channels, the real prize lies with the ability to create unique experiences. A broader multi-screen approach designed dynamically by channel will enable the sort of customer experiences that yield higher engagement and contribute to overall success.
