It seems as though Facebook is testing a revised News Feed that could be its biggest change since the social media service was first launched. A screenshot from Twitter user @tomcritchlow shows the mobile layout for the changes, highlighting news topics at the bottom of the screen, including World & U.S., Sports, and Food. Presumably, the default section is the News Feed we know and love today.
“People have told us they’d like options to see more stories on Facebook around specific topics they’re interested in,” said a Facebook spokesperson in an email to Mashable. “So we have been testing a few feeds for people to view more and different stories from people and Pages based on topic areas.”
Whoah. Massive change to the Facebook news feed. Anyone else seeing this? pic.twitter.com/EA3dFQRS6y
— Tom Critchlow (@tomcritchlow) April 15, 2016
Ideally, the reader-type approach to the News Feed will offer users the news that they actually care about — so those that want to see mainly sports news can head to the sports section. It could also encourage people to use Facebook as more of a news source, rather than the likes of Twitter, which has become a primary news source for many users.
The changes will also include a tool to edit the feeds that you want to see, so if you’re not much of a sports fan, you can remove the topic from the list of topics that you’ll be presented with. By default, however, all topics are on.
Of course, it’s not at all certain that the revamped feed will actually ever get a full launch, and it’s totally possible that Facebook is testing a feature that it will ultimately discard. Still, the idea of being able to decide what types of news you want to see is an appealing one, and if implemented it could make Facebook even more of an important app in our digital lives.
