Facebook Redesign: Photo-Heavy, Mobile-Friendly

Facebook officially revealed its new design today, a visual and in some ways functional overhaul designed, in Mark Zuckerberg's words, to "give people the best personalized newspaper we can." What does that mean? Well:

• The first thing you'll notice when it arrives is that photos have been made much more prominent; they're bigger, full-bleed affairs, and there will be an entire feed devoted just to them. Sources tell Mike Isaac at All Things Digital that photos consistently generate the most user engagement, forcing engineers to rig the algorithm to show more text-based updates to compensate.

• Speaking of the dedicated photo feed, it'll be just one of several sub-feeds you can browse, including one for music, one for pages you're following, and one for each of your interest and friends lists. Zuckerberg explained this with the newspaper analogy: "It should have a front page news section of top things going on, and let you drill down into any topic you want."
• Photos aren't the only things that'll be larger; check-ins will be bigger, too, with maps to display locations.
• In another news-oriented move, Facebook will try to display more content about trending topics, displaying news stories from various sources about topics you've Liked, TechCrunch reports.
• Facebook also made a point of saying the design was "mobile inspired," and designed to work just as well on phones and tablets as it does on your laptop.
• Third-party content will also get a makeover. One nifty change: If several of your friends share the same link, you'll be able to mouse over their profile images to see what each of them had to say about it.
• One curious thing: Despite the visual-centric approach, Facebook said that its prized possession Instagram will be treated just like any other app.
• The changes will roll out slowly in the coming weeks, though impatient users can sign up for a waiting list here to get them ASAP. The changes will also hit iPhone and iPad before they come to Android.
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(More Facebook stories.)