New Facebook Designs On Their Way

As you know we try to keep you updated on Facebook news as well as game news because... well, it affects us just as much! I've decided to post it here instead of the main news feed because it verges on the nerdy.

See, Facebook, Oh Facebook of the Many Changes, looks like it's changing again...

First up we're getting a new News Feed, the main homepage. There's a press event to show it off this coming Thursday so we'll hopefully get a bit more news and be able to show you what it's like after that (strangely we weren't on the press mailing list, I can only think an oversight...)

Image Credit: The Next Web

Current rumours are the feed will become a lot less text based and a lot more image based, so we'll see bigger pictures to try and... spice it up.

Whether that will help or hinder us, only Facebook knows, it's been quite totalitarian over trying to hide more games content lately, but I guess as long as they don't remove the Game specific feeds then it might even be a GOOD thing! (Look, be positive, statistically even Facebook can make good changes, if only by accident.)

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Our own space

Second up is that they're testing new Timeline/Profile designs in New Zealand (their traditional guinea pig country) that are actually more of a step in the retro direction back to the older designs.

The first change will be at the top, instead of the old design that we see now...

We'll see things made a bit more minimalist, with our names and action buttons moved into the header image and a new set of smaller, image-less menus slotted in where it was, meaning the actual new stuff on our profiles like Statuses and game posts are closer to the top of the page when you load. The about section is moved entirely, more on that in a minute.

But, I hear you say, but how will the PAGE look, well, thanks to this image from ReadWrite we can see (click for bigger)

Image Credit: ReadWrite

As you can see, in a step back to the olden golden days all our statuses, posts, links etc are now in one single column down the centre of the page, no more zig-zagging from left to right.

Instead, the left hand side is now  topped off with the About section and then uses more social items, a bigger set of photos, our likes, our favourites... it basically becomes a billboard of us. That means we might hopefully find game posts easier because some of the more random boxes that clutter the Timeline will all be squeezed off into the left.

What we have to remember is that although Timeline got the rap for hiding game posts, it was never really to blame, Facebook were going to do it anyway, Timeline was just the convenient time. We've seen a much smaller precedence for Game posts over the last year or so, perhaps because Facebook are worried they're becoming a gaming platform more than a social network and spammy game could drive away people who simply want to keep in touch.

So whether this will suddenly take us back to the olden days of every post showing up is debatable  probably highly unlikely... but you never know, it certainly doesn't look like it's making anything worse.