UPDATED. Facebook's new News Feed will begin a very slow rollout today. The biggest changes focus on much larger pictures, consistency across devices, and multiple new feeds. (And also bigger ads)
More specifics:
- Each feed story type ( Photos, Videos, Links, Friends, Events) has a new, more rich layout in the feed.
- The news feed has more prominent filters. These seem to be based on Friend Lists, but are more prominently featured, and Facebook says that users will select different filters based on where they are - Close Friends for quick mobile sessions, the full feed for longer desktop sessions.
- Pulling lessons from the mobile apps, Facebook has added back "the best parts" to the desktop UI and standardized a bit. This should make it easier to use everywhere, and certainly is a step in the right direction.
Eventually available at http://facebook.com/newsfeed, Facebook will be doling this out a little at a time so that they can bring refine with user feedback as they go along. Visit that link to join the waiting list.
The new look is really heavily reliant on images - another reason why brands should be using big visuals as part of their updates. The already significantly outperform other post types, and also allow comment editing after publishing, unlike regular link or status posts.
I am looking forward to this. It looks a lot like the current Google+, and like YouTube's new One Channel layout, it is consistent across platforms (phone, tablet, desktop)
