News Feed, one of the three so-called “pillars” of Facebook alongside Timeline and Graph Search, is the bustling epicenter of the social network – and it’s overdue for an overhaul.

In a press invite Friday, Facebook invited us to “Come see a new look for News Feed” on the morning of Thursday March 7 at its Menlo Park headquarters.

News Feed Needs Some Spring Cleaning 

At turns maddening, cluttered and ad-ridden, News Feed is the core of the Facebook social experience. If you click the “home” button that’s where you’ll land – and it’s certainly where Facebook wants its users to hang out.

Facebook’s real-time algorithm-driven social ticker is also what makes the social network so confoundingly addictive - when did my college roommate get hitched? Why can’t I stop reading about people I haven’t spoken to in years and barely knew to begin with? 

While Facebook obviously has the hyper-engaged can’t-peel-your-eyes-away aspect of News Feed on lock, it’s still a confusing, busy page. Managing who and what shows up on News Feed remains a task of Sisyphean proportion. We’re betting that the News Feed redesign will remove some of the micro-managing necessary to maintain a relevant social stream. Facebook could rethink the formula that determines what shows up in the News Feed – but we’d even take better, more centralized controls for sorting and hiding content. 

A (Literal) Stream Of Revenue

The cunningly engineered sense of addictive voyeurism is what powers News Feed – and what drives advertising revenue straight into Facebook’s pocket. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Facebook raked in $1.33 billion in advertising revenue – and that was a 41% leap, which means the social network is only getting stickier.

The last time Facebook changed News Feed in a major way was back in September 2011, though it tinkers around with all of its features aggressively on a rolling basis.

We know Facebook is playing around with a cleaner, more image-centric Timeline design, so it’s possible for the News Feed revamp to follow suit. Rumors are also afloat that a very visual redesign for the mobile News Feed is on the way – and with Facebook’s mobile mindedness, we’d expect some news on that front too.

We won’t know what the company has up its sleeve for certain until March 7, but we can cling to one certainty – it’s not going to be a Facebook phone.

Categorised as: Chief Digital Officer | Digital Media | Feedster

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