Facebook Unveils New Home Page

Facebook is rolling out a major update to its home page. Users will notice bigger photos and links, as well as options for filtering their news feed for posts related to music, photos, close friends, etc.

Somini Sengupta with The New York Times reported, “Hoping to tame the blizzard of information that has turned off many users and discouraged some advertisers, Facebook on Thursday unveiled a major makeover of the home page that greets users when they log into the site. The new design of the Facebook News Feed presents bigger photos and links, including for advertisements, and lets users see specialized streams focused on topics like music and posts by close friends.”

PCWorld quoted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who explained, “What we’re trying to do is give everybody on the world their very own personalized daily newspaper.”

InformationWeek’s Thomas Claburn observed, “Many observers, including some at Google, believe the inspiration came from Google+. ‘Proud to see +Mark Zuckerberg promote G+,’ quipped Urs Hölzle, SVP of technical infrastructure at Google, in a Google+ post. ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!'”

In other Facebook-related news, PCMag’s Chloe Albanesius noted, “Facebook users have taken steps to guard their privacy on the social network over the years, but changes to Facebook’s policies have prompted an inadvertent increase in sharing recently, according to a new study…. In recent years, controls that allowed people to share information with only a select group led to an increase in sharing among friends rather than the public at large. But with the advent of ‘frictionless sharing’ apps and ads across the network, people ‘disclosed more to other entities as well … often without awareness or explicit consent.'”