12 ms·

Facebook's New Feed

247 points by mikeevans 14y ago

ryguytilidie 14y ago
"Great news guys! Bigger pictures!" translation "Great news advertisers! Bigger ads!"
- Yhippa 14y ago
  Pretty much. Whenever I use it on my iPad that's probably 70% of the screen real estate now when I open up the app.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  Also, bigger pictures…
martinshen 14y ago
Any thoughts on how this will affect FB connect stories (positively or negatively). I love Graph search, it has helped tremendously pin down who are users are without using FQL or our DB.
jibbist 14y ago
> Bursting With Color Facebook know my locale is UK English, not US English. A small niggle I know but these things annoy me!
- MartinCron 14y ago
  And if they didn't already know, your use of the collective plural "Facebook know" instead of the more American-sounding "Facebook knows" should tip them off.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Niggle is the true shibboleth. That word is illegal in America now.
webwanderings 14y ago
It looks like a Wordpress.com Reader.
pyrocat 14y ago
> Goodbye Clutter. Hello bright, beautiful stories. Unless you consider inline advertisements disguised as posts from your friends as "clutter", because uh, there will be way more of those.
jonemo 14y ago
Oh cool. A Google+ skin for Facebook?
x-sam 14y ago
lots of nice UX improvements, but right now somehow reminds me of Google+
lawdawg 14y ago
Looks awfully similar to the G+ feed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that its confirmation that G+ was probably heading in the right direction. The bigger (no pun intended) news here is the much bigger ads that are now in the news feed.
- kurtfunai 14y ago
  I agree, my initial thoughts were that it reminded me of G+. I personally love the G+ feed, the issue was lack of content to fill it. I was starting to get pretty tired of looking at the same old cluttered feed on facebook. I always felt that the feed column was surprisingly thin, and that the left column took up a lot of real estate for something I interacted with so rarely. I think this will be a refreshing change for Facebook.
  - joonix 14y ago
    G+, Android, and the Note II. A beautiful combination. Unfortunately, nobody I know uses G+ so I don't check much.
    - netrus 14y ago
      Look for some Communities in your field of interest. That way, G+ has become a great place to discover interesting content, at least for me.
      - vanni 14y ago
        For example my community for and about Internet Startups or the Hacker News one. Internet Startups: https://plus.google.com/communities/100445483815501942968 https://plus.google.com/communities/100445483815501942968 Hacker News: https://plus.google.com/communities/104388679763490357266 https://plus.google.com/communities/104388679763490357266
      - curiousfiddler 14y ago
        I think G+ should start relying more on content, as the network effect is not working out. Something like what Quora has done. If they manage to get people using G+ somehow, the chances of network effect kicking off will be higher. Right now, they gotta think of doing something else.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- untog 14y ago
  Congratulations?
mcphilip 14y ago
I can see the Photos feed being an interesting Instagram like view of the Facebook feed assuming it only includes photos uploaded by friends and not all links to photos shared by friends (e.g. quick memes).
cristianpascu 14y ago
They always try to make it interesting by making it sound like it's about stories and people and stuff. When really it's about cats and food and silly quotes of not so famous people.
- untog 14y ago
  Depends how selective you are with your friends list.
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  And repostings of smug political memes, and repostings of trite pop-culture mash-ups, and repostings of alarmist linkbait... And then a welcome anecdote from a family member that brings a smile to your face just as you were considering deleting your account for the fiftieth time.
- nawitus 14y ago
  Well, that depends on your friendlist. Most of the stuff on my "feed" are news articles and blog posts, there's almost nothing about cats and rarely food related posts.
  - cristianpascu 14y ago
    That sounds like you turned your Facebook wall into a Twitter/LinkedIn/G+ feed. Kudos! :)
- rhizome 14y ago
  The big lie is right up top: "All about your friends." If you look at the layout, it de-prioritizes who is posting as a sidebar avatar (or multiples, in the case of reshares). The left gutter of the feed then becomes a morass of icons and avatars, with the inevitable descent into noise as the calendar icons and companies like CNN proliferate. I wouldn't be surprised if companies start redesigning their FB icons to look more "friend"-ly. The redesign also copies a problematic design feature of the last revamp of Twitter where the resharer (retweeter) is grayed at the top of the post, minimizing its relationship to the content compared to "Foo shared a link," "Bar is going to Event Name." Curiously, this attributory distinction is more apparent in the mobile view. So, at the end of the day, as content gets visually divorced from the people associated with it, it makes it easier for FB to slip more and more paid content into feeds. P.S. "Join Waiting List" ...I'd be fascinated to learn how they use the waiting list and graph traversal to structure the rollout. You know they're going to try to maximize something like that.
minimaxir 14y ago
The most interesting line of the press conference: "We're going to try something new. We're going to put the news items in chronological order."
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  I thought the same thing. Isn't that what they SHOULD have been doing all along? I know they had the drop-down to switch from "most recent" and "top stories", but I was interested by that also. I wonder if they meant something more "grey".
  - untog 14y ago
    Whether they should have been doing it depends on how you use Facebook, I think. I tend to log into it once a day or so, so a non-chronological view actually suits me great. It'll be a shame if it goes away.
    - lessnonymous 14y ago
      Whether chronological makes sense is a product of the number of times you log in and the number of 'friends' you have (and the number of posts they make). I have 140 friends. I log in a couple of times a day. I have filtered all their crap. I want chronological order. If I had 1000 'friends' who posted all day, then I would want a way more filtered and special-sauced feed.
- picklefish 14y ago
  This is great news. Along with a feed that shows you EVERYTHING the people you follow post.
  - JacobAldridge 14y ago
    And Groups and Pages!
    - return0 14y ago
PuercoPop 14y ago
Apparently has caught on to the fact that most people nowadays don't like to read. sigh
- AdamTReineke 14y ago
  A photo is worth a thousand words. Cameras are ubiquitous, mobile bandwidth can support it, and it's generally more visually enjoyable.
trevin 14y ago
Looks great with professionally shot, high res photos. Most of the photos that will be shared out in the wild won't look nearly this good in the new layout. Same thing happened with the Cover Photo.
- cheald 14y ago
  Yup. We always have to talk our designers down because they use 9000x14000 pictures when designing layouts - the true test of a layout is whether it survives a crappy blown-up cellphone picture in that slot.
  - mlent 14y ago
    So true, but hopefully, as phones -- which are replacing digital cameras for many people -- up their resolution, such designs will look better for people with a broader range of mobile devices!
recuter 14y ago
Great. It isn't Schadenfreude exactly, but I hope big changes ups (that they have to make because doing nothing is not an option) like this accelerate their decline. I don't think Facebook will go away any time soon but it will become another Yahoo and that can only be a good thing for the ecosystem in terms of opportunities.
- ryusage 14y ago
  Except this is a good change, from what I can see. I think it really does make the site nicer to look at. Why would improving the site accelerate their decline?
  - drcube 14y ago
    Change. Users hate change, period. Unless you were psychic and managed to change it in exactly and only the ways they were thinking of.
    - batiudrami 14y ago
      Meh, people will complain, and then they will get over it, just like every other iteration of Facebook so far. No one uses G+. I'm relatively technical, and have 40-odd friends there, and the last post was from December 2012 (and the one before that? July!). The problem with Google and social networking is that social networks initially catch on by being 'cool'. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pintrest - they were all initially cool, and got that market right. G+ has never been cool (nor, in my opinion, is Path). If an app is used by a small group of people because it's cool, then it will grow. If it's used by a group of techies because it's better, it will grow until (at most), it covers the entire subset of techies. G+ isn't going anywhere, at least until there's a major rebrand.
    - ryusage 14y ago
      Ah. Well sure, people complain about big changes, every time they happen, mostly because they don't like having to relearn things. When FB introduced the newsfeed, people thought it was supremely creepy and they complained. Now they probably don't remember what it was like without it. When the timeline was introduced, it was the same thing. People complained about business accounts, apps, searching, photo tagging...every major change gets loads of complaints. And yet most people accept or even love those things within a couple months, and FB has continued to grow monumentally. I see no reason to imagine this visual redesign or even the upcoming graph search will be any different.
yvoschaap2 14y ago
> Inspired by mobile Interesting move to adopt a mobile UI to desktop users. I agree having a cross-platform uniform experience makes sense but like YouTube, their left sidebar feels out of place on desktop.
BaconJuice 14y ago
can someone post some screenshots on imgur please? No access at work =/
- martinshen 14y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/mp2QNad.png http://i.imgur.com/mp2QNad.png Just 2 pics though.
  - BaconJuice 14y ago
    soo G+? is this live now? or not yet?
    - macleanjr 14y ago
      They are gradually rolling it out on the web to users over the next month. Then iOS, then Android.
      - umeshunni 14y ago
        Stupid question: What browser are they using in those screenshots? It doesn't look like Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
        BaconJuice 14y ago
        it looks like it's on an iPad default browser
- nwh 14y ago
  Here's a full capture. Large image ahead. http://i.imgur.com/QbawFLb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QbawFLb.jpg
HugoMelo 14y ago
It looks so pretty. Oddly reminiscent of G+ +1 for the redesign
- zacharytamas 14y ago
  +1 for the +1 pun
jgw 14y ago
Is anyone else getting really, really bored of the term "beautiful" being bandied around so much in this type of context? It has long ceased to mean anything at all. I understand the importance of aesthetics in design, but it seems odd to show off the design under the banner "bright, beautiful stories" - surely that depends on the stories?
- brown9-2 14y ago
  It's also a bit meaningless since no one ever wants to describe the thing they just designed as not being "beautiful".
- joonix 14y ago
  Beautiful, amazing, and "super" are the three most overused and annoying words that the young hipster tech community uses.
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    gorgeous is becoming pretty common too
  - enqk 14y ago
    Gorgeous!
  - triplesec 14y ago
    that was an amazing observation!
    - triplesec 14y ago
      to note carefully some data here, joonix said in his last post on HN: "G+, Android, and the Note II. A beautiful combination. Unfortunately, nobody I know uses G+ so I don't check much."
      - joonix 14y ago
        I never said I wasn't part of the community ;)
volandovengo 14y ago
if there is a view to just see the pages that you follow, this will keep brands happy. Otherwise - yawn!
- NoPiece 14y ago
  They did announce such a view, and it should make brands, as well is some users, happy. I follow w00t, but only see the actual sales they post once in a while, now I can see the daily deals daily.
MisterBastahrd 14y ago
I don't like this trend towards icons without labels. They make things prettier but don't increase functionality.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  I deleted some mails on my phone the other day because there was a new flat icon and I was curious what it did. Turns out it deleted the currently selected emails.
thechut 14y ago
> Join the waiting list Sounds like building fake hype to me...
garindra 14y ago
If anyone from FB is here: is the live news ticker going away? I can't see it in any of the new design preview pictures. I honestly love that feature and would hate it to go away in the new design.
justjimmy 14y ago
This is probably my favorite redesign from a major company so far. Very minimalistic and clean. Also can't help but visualize how Instagram will come into play, with such a heavy emphasis on photos in this new update.
- kunai 14y ago
  Minimalism doesn't involve hiding features, text, and navigation items away where they're hard to find. Minimalism is about finding new ways to make things simpler, not to hide things that were already there in the first place, arguably reducing usability. See The C Programming Langauge for true minimalism.
fakeer 14y ago
Looks like Google+. Obviously obvious. Difference being, very few people actually use Google+ Though I do not use Facebook actively, but I still have my account and do check it a few days so the new/cleaner look is certainly a welcome break. Now, it depends upon what Facebook "pushes down the throat of this new feed". If it's all the same but larger ads, spam posts or those app posts then nothing changed and if it did, it changed for bad.
- saraid216 14y ago
  I am never going to get tired of being called no one.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Ding ding ding! The only comment, as far as I can tell, hitting the nail on the head. For ALL the moaning about Facebook's ad revenue, I can't believe it's not being parroted more. I recently posted a status on Facebook, were most of my audience is tech-ish people, and got an overwhelmingly affirmative response to the supposition that the News Feed is increasingly spammy. I don't blame FB. I don't want to be that guy bitching needlessly, but it's becoming a nuisance. Especially when I get way more relevant information through G+ and Twitter. Frankly, FB is becoming more and more about the Pages I like (which arguably, to some, is already nearly spam) and random pages that FB is super desperate for me to like. "Mediaite" anyone?
  - fakeer 14y ago
    Yes. Facebook is a business model where the money comes from legally violating users' privacy which the users served into their platter with full consent. I never ever blame them - though I don't like it. Can't speak of the new interface, my account still hasn't got it. Hardly matters. Because now I only check Facebook two a friend's contact details or message a friend for whom the only medium communication has reduced to Facebook chat/messages. Or maybe once in a while to make some smart-ass status update :-) Liking pages is inviting spam. I've stopped doing that. I keep my minimal contact over there. With cell phone, email hidden from outside world and make a point to check the settings time to time. I do not share photos over there any more. I usually do it via Dropbox or just email it, if it's a few pics(Google sees it then :P). Google+ is a lot lot more cleaner and easier but unfortunately there's no one else. I mean for me there's hardly 2-3 guys who share it and I am not switching friends or making new ones to use Google+. Mediaite is a portal I see. I apologise but I couldn't get the context or maybe the joke was lost on me if there was one :P (non USA guy here).
buro9 14y ago
I'm not even on Facebook, and barely knew what timeline looked like, but having just read this I'm impressed... in part because it looks so damn close to work I've got in progress for forums :(
kenferry 14y ago
The design of the intro page is interesting to me. There's a strong attempt to avoid the "boxes in boxes" look that, unfortunately, facebook itself still has. But on the intro page, the only frame is the the browser window itself.
callil 14y ago
They are actually coming into line with the internet in 2013. Universal experience across all platforms? Awesome. New, clearer less cluttered interface? Awesome. I also think the killer feature is the ability to clearly filter your news feed by pictures, updates, people you follow etc. Fot instance, I DO want to be able to follow some celebrities and tv shows on facebook without them cluttering up my newsfeed too much. Now all I have to do is select my following list and I'm there. Ditto for friends + photos etc.
fmax30 14y ago
Is it just me or does the side bar look a lot like the Ubuntu's Unity Interface sidebar?.
- why-el 14y ago
  It does, and the first thing I thought was: This person is trying out the new Facebook design on a Ubuntu machine, yay!
obilgic 14y ago
Facebook will end up being a photo sharing site.
- hisyam 14y ago
  Facebook IS the biggest photo sharing site.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  End up? That's basically where they started. The popularity of Facebook in its very early days was because they made it easy to "stalk" your friends (and/or crushes) via the photos that they shared. If Facebook hadn't made photographic integration so central to their platform, I don't think they'd have taken off the way they did. That's also why they were so scared of Instagram - they knew how powerful a network of photo sharing can be.
vacipr 14y ago
Another waiting list ? This is really annoying.
jschuur 14y ago
Announced in a YouTube video. I love it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQHYQHnMk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQHYQHnMk
- jschuur 14y ago
  Another video, more focused on actually running through the specific changes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PW54Sm99ck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PW54Sm99ck
kunai 14y ago
Glad they finally got rid of Lucida. The typeface sucked with Facebook's aesthetic; Helvetica Neue seems to be far more conducive to the new layout.
- msutherl 14y ago
  Agreed! The use of Lucida made the site feel very dated to the mid 00's, and it wasn't terribly readable either. Helvetica, especially with full-usage of the font-weights (from light to bold) makes for a much better typographical hierarchy and a more airy feel. Glad also to see that they're moving to a no-borders design and really filling up the browser window.
carlesfe 14y ago
I have an honest question. Does it give them tactical advantage to redesign their site every year? Not that I'm against redesigns, in fact I think that they're getting better and better, but I'm curious whether they do this for the users or for their own sake.
- nivla 14y ago
  One hypothesis would be to prevent ad-blindness. If you visit the same layout day after day, after a while your mind learns to subconsciously detaches adverts from the content, it will be like it doesn't even exist. New layout, the learning process has to start all over again.
- robryan 14y ago
  As much as people hate change I think they also hate stagnation.
newman314 14y ago
Is there a way to block the ads on Facebook using say Adblock etc.?
- aneth4 14y ago
  Yes. Use Adblock.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    How does it detect sponsored stories?
nwh 14y ago
I wonder if Layervault is going to file a DMCA against Facebook too. http://i.imgur.com/h07jo3d.png http://i.imgur.com/h07jo3d.png
- LandoCalrissian 14y ago
  Haha, that's great.
omar7769 14y ago
tumblr did it first, and did it better.
methodin 14y ago
What is it that facebook employess work on daily? I see release of new features fairly often for something like G+ but rarely see anything from FB short of redoing what they've already done. Is this accurate or am I just unaware of a release blog?
- chucknthem 14y ago
  You can follow the facebook engineering page to see updates on what engineers get up to https://www.facebook.com/Engineering https://www.facebook.com/Engineering
- smackfu 14y ago
  Their news page gives a good sense of the major new features: http://newsroom.fb.com/News http://newsroom.fb.com/News In general, I don't think they announce minor new features at all, they just deploy them slowly.
  - methodin 14y ago
    That would make sense but I wonder why. It is the minor updates that might be more interesting than "we've redone X".
    - smackfu 14y ago
      Two reasons I can think of: Facebook does incremental rollouts, so they don't want to announce features that everyone doesn't have, plus Facebook users are extremely hostile to change (that they know about) so providing a list of changes is counter productive.
      - methodin 14y ago
        That might be true but I do recall that last "cover" update was announced to all but rolled out incrementally as well. The mentality issue might be the true root cause but perhaps if they did more announcements people might get more used to the idea of things changing.
ececconi 14y ago
I'm wondering if I could be more influential with the words I write on Facebook by posting pictures of sentences in a stylized manner.
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  yes, if reddit is anything to go on.
- nsp 14y ago
  Absolutely. Pictures have a much higher base edgerank. That's why you see a lot of companies uploading a picture with their promotion, or saving it as an image. Source: http://m.techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/ http://m.techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/ (see edge types)
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Oh god FB is actively promoting this shit? (I guess it tracks user behavior, but still...)
nanook 14y ago
That video makes it seem like they cured cancer or something. But no.. they uncluttered the news feed!! Is this really such a big deal?
dkrich 14y ago
The most striking thing about this is its unapologetic rip-off of Apple's product tours.
- aneth4 14y ago
  Good artists copy. Great artists steal. Neither apologize.
  - minopret 14y ago
    I am neither, so I cite sources and add acknowledgments. And apologies. (Sorry to go off topic.)
Dirlewanger 14y ago
You mean all the crap I don't care about is now organized into categories of crap I don't care about?
- Kiro 14y ago
  Why do you even use Facebook?
lukethomas 14y ago
It's sad that this will be cluttered with sponsored stories.
twodayslate 14y ago
It looks like an improvement to me. I joined the wait list. Hopefully there are not to many "I like the old design better" groups.
jakejake 14y ago
I think it's commendable every time Facebook has pushed through a major re-design like this. They have a about the largest group of change-averse users of any site. Countdown to all of the complaining and petitions that will happen once people learn that their cheese is about to be moved.
- robryan 14y ago
  The being wanting to hold on to the current design will be the same people that hated the current design when it was released.
instakill 14y ago
No examples of how regular status updates look like...
swalling 14y ago
What is that browser in the intro page? Are they just trying to be neutral or...? I find it really distracting.
ma2xd 14y ago
Designing Facebook is like putting makeup on a pig.
- rhizome 14y ago
  The pay's better at FB, however.
JacobIrwin 14y ago
Overall I'm impressed. These new Facebook UI updates proves that... .nws_feedContent{-moz-border-radius: 3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;border-radius:3px;} can go a looong way to improve design.
uxwtf 14y ago
Finally. I was wondering if FB will even get rid of its cluttered design. It took them so long... I like mobile first approach and clean user interface. Looking on these screen shots http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=4367 http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetails... still can't get why some huge images overboard the main column (looks like they have negative left and right margins) on iPad and mobile while other pictures/videos have margins? It was already the case on iPhone, but on iPad in the two columns view it looks worst.
Irishsteve 14y ago
Good bye clutter... hello new room for more ads
ww520 14y ago
It's actually pretty slick. I like the small picture icons on the left of each content pane as the content scrolling by.
EGreg 14y ago
I applaud this. Also want to point out that facebook and google are converging -- google is integrating more social into its search (http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry-page-engineered-beautiful-revolution http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-ho...), facebook integrating more search into its social (https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch) I'm glad we are doing something different, because these juggernauts are about to collide and the ripples will be felt everywhere.
WilliamSt 14y ago
How do you get it before everyone else?
- BaconJuice 14y ago
  work at Facebook.
rorrr 14y ago
This is ridiculous. Currently FB limits your feed photos to 400px (horizontal and vertical). It looks like they are increasing it to 550px. This, literally, makes no sense. Current monitors can easily support 1000px horizontal, and, as a photographer, I wouldn't consider that quality. Both FB and G+ suck as photo galleries. I want to see large beautiful photos, not 550px thumbnails.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I found out that you can use the mouse wheel to enlargen photos on G+.
  - rorrr 14y ago
    I just tried it. Mouse wheel just scrolls the page up and down.
    - kschua 14y ago
      It's Ctrl + Mouse wheel
      - skeletonjelly 14y ago
        That's using your browser then no?
      - rorrr 14y ago
        That's just the browser zoom. It doesn't increase the quality of the photos.
        saraid216 14y ago
        This is a demo of what it looks like for me: http://imgur.com/a/Mja3r http://imgur.com/a/Mja3r Dunno what to tell you. :/ It does need mouse focus, but I imagine you tried that. I did not need to use Ctrl.
return0 14y ago
If you have been following facebook as a developer, you will know that these changes affect the visibility of apps and third parties profoundly. It's not discussed alot, but these changes are circular over the years; there has been barely any innovation since the introduction of the newsfeed. This new sorting they've been working on is the default from a few years back, and the aesthetic is obviously a copy of G+. Facebook may be considered a successful company, but the truth is that its leaders seem to lack in vision and have the tendency to make the same mistakes expecting different results. Zuck had some great intuitions (quick and aggressive growth, treating all users as wannabe attention whores), but the design of the product is circling around itself since 2009 at least. Their platform became a huge success when Dave Morin was in charge, yet ever since, despite the fact that it has been refactored a gazillion times, nothing substantial has been added to it. As a developer of apps that benefit from exposure to facebook, i brace myself for the forthcoming semantic changes in their platform that is most likely to follow.
ameen 14y ago
Is Facebook actually featuring Twitter's Vine on their New Feed video? http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s Also, I like it better, more content / less chrome. The Follow news feed filter was much needed.
mkr-hn 14y ago
It's tumblrbook. I always preferred tumblr's aesthetic over FB and G+, so this is a welcome change.
icarus_drowning 14y ago
As a teacher, I'm somewhat sad that text will be less important, but I can't say that I blame Facebook for emphasizing images over words. While it might be nice to tell 7th graders that they should be able to write because the internet is based on text, it's always been true that any day that might change. And it isn't like writing skills will be less important, just harder to explain to insular children of the middle class.
- qwertzlcoatl 14y ago
  Does somebody have a tl;dr of this statement?
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    For some reason, a teacher thinks that this will damage Facebook's reputation as a bastion of great intellect and writing.
  - dopamean 14y ago
    Or, even better, a pictorial representation?
amy_seqmedia 14y ago
The redesign really feels like it really will translate well to mobile, as in the Facebook Phone. Instead of a grid of apps, you have a strip of categories of information (feeds, events, notes, chat) followed by your favorite apps. Then instead of a separate speed dial screen you have those user icons below that.
nwzpaperman 14y ago
Can't critique HN for it, kudos, but the problem is people are lazy and don't want to read. Tumblr is just another photo sharing platform, IMO. Facebook and G+ are running over each other to show display ads. The fixation on better display ads is constraining creativity when everyone should be focusing on making the Internet a productive place for individuals. The economics matter and shape the UX and server side development.

Facebook's New Feed

247 points by mikeevans 14y ago

ryguytilidie 14y ago

"Great news guys! Bigger pictures!" translation "Great news advertisers! Bigger ads!"

Yhippa 14y ago
Pretty much. Whenever I use it on my iPad that's probably 70% of the screen real estate now when I open up the app.
glhaynes 14y ago
Also, bigger pictures…

martinshen 14y ago

Any thoughts on how this will affect FB connect stories (positively or negatively). I love Graph search, it has helped tremendously pin down who are users are without using FQL or our DB.

jibbist 14y ago

> Bursting With Color Facebook know my locale is UK English, not US English. A small niggle I know but these things annoy me!

MartinCron 14y ago
And if they didn't already know, your use of the collective plural "Facebook know" instead of the more American-sounding "Facebook knows" should tip them off.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Niggle is the true shibboleth. That word is illegal in America now.

webwanderings 14y ago

It looks like a Wordpress.com Reader.

pyrocat 14y ago

> Goodbye Clutter. Hello bright, beautiful stories. Unless you consider inline advertisements disguised as posts from your friends as "clutter", because uh, there will be way more of those.

jonemo 14y ago

Oh cool. A Google+ skin for Facebook?

x-sam 14y ago

lots of nice UX improvements, but right now somehow reminds me of Google+

lawdawg 14y ago

Looks awfully similar to the G+ feed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that its confirmation that G+ was probably heading in the right direction. The bigger (no pun intended) news here is the much bigger ads that are now in the news feed.

kurtfunai 14y ago
I agree, my initial thoughts were that it reminded me of G+. I personally love the G+ feed, the issue was lack of content to fill it. I was starting to get pretty tired of looking at the same old cluttered feed on facebook. I always felt that the feed column was surprisingly thin, and that the left column took up a lot of real estate for something I interacted with so rarely. I think this will be a refreshing change for Facebook.
- joonix 14y ago
  G+, Android, and the Note II. A beautiful combination. Unfortunately, nobody I know uses G+ so I don't check much.
  - netrus 14y ago
    Look for some Communities in your field of interest. That way, G+ has become a great place to discover interesting content, at least for me.
    - vanni 14y ago
      For example my community for and about Internet Startups or the Hacker News one. Internet Startups: https://plus.google.com/communities/100445483815501942968 https://plus.google.com/communities/100445483815501942968 Hacker News: https://plus.google.com/communities/104388679763490357266 https://plus.google.com/communities/104388679763490357266
    - curiousfiddler 14y ago
      I think G+ should start relying more on content, as the network effect is not working out. Something like what Quora has done. If they manage to get people using G+ somehow, the chances of network effect kicking off will be higher. Right now, they gotta think of doing something else.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

untog 14y ago
Congratulations?

mcphilip 14y ago

I can see the Photos feed being an interesting Instagram like view of the Facebook feed assuming it only includes photos uploaded by friends and not all links to photos shared by friends (e.g. quick memes).

cristianpascu 14y ago

They always try to make it interesting by making it sound like it's about stories and people and stuff. When really it's about cats and food and silly quotes of not so famous people.

untog 14y ago
Depends how selective you are with your friends list.
mortenjorck 14y ago
And repostings of smug political memes, and repostings of trite pop-culture mash-ups, and repostings of alarmist linkbait... And then a welcome anecdote from a family member that brings a smile to your face just as you were considering deleting your account for the fiftieth time.
nawitus 14y ago
Well, that depends on your friendlist. Most of the stuff on my "feed" are news articles and blog posts, there's almost nothing about cats and rarely food related posts.
- cristianpascu 14y ago
  That sounds like you turned your Facebook wall into a Twitter/LinkedIn/G+ feed. Kudos! :)
rhizome 14y ago
The big lie is right up top: "All about your friends." If you look at the layout, it de-prioritizes who is posting as a sidebar avatar (or multiples, in the case of reshares). The left gutter of the feed then becomes a morass of icons and avatars, with the inevitable descent into noise as the calendar icons and companies like CNN proliferate. I wouldn't be surprised if companies start redesigning their FB icons to look more "friend"-ly. The redesign also copies a problematic design feature of the last revamp of Twitter where the resharer (retweeter) is grayed at the top of the post, minimizing its relationship to the content compared to "Foo shared a link," "Bar is going to Event Name." Curiously, this attributory distinction is more apparent in the mobile view. So, at the end of the day, as content gets visually divorced from the people associated with it, it makes it easier for FB to slip more and more paid content into feeds. P.S. "Join Waiting List" ...I'd be fascinated to learn how they use the waiting list and graph traversal to structure the rollout. You know they're going to try to maximize something like that.

minimaxir 14y ago

The most interesting line of the press conference: "We're going to try something new. We're going to put the news items in chronological order."

bluetidepro 14y ago
I thought the same thing. Isn't that what they SHOULD have been doing all along? I know they had the drop-down to switch from "most recent" and "top stories", but I was interested by that also. I wonder if they meant something more "grey".
- untog 14y ago
  Whether they should have been doing it depends on how you use Facebook, I think. I tend to log into it once a day or so, so a non-chronological view actually suits me great. It'll be a shame if it goes away.
  - lessnonymous 14y ago
    Whether chronological makes sense is a product of the number of times you log in and the number of 'friends' you have (and the number of posts they make). I have 140 friends. I log in a couple of times a day. I have filtered all their crap. I want chronological order. If I had 1000 'friends' who posted all day, then I would want a way more filtered and special-sauced feed.
picklefish 14y ago
This is great news. Along with a feed that shows you EVERYTHING the people you follow post.
- JacobAldridge 14y ago
  And Groups and Pages!
  - return0 14y ago

PuercoPop 14y ago

Apparently has caught on to the fact that most people nowadays don't like to read. sigh

AdamTReineke 14y ago
A photo is worth a thousand words. Cameras are ubiquitous, mobile bandwidth can support it, and it's generally more visually enjoyable.

trevin 14y ago

Looks great with professionally shot, high res photos. Most of the photos that will be shared out in the wild won't look nearly this good in the new layout. Same thing happened with the Cover Photo.

cheald 14y ago
Yup. We always have to talk our designers down because they use 9000x14000 pictures when designing layouts - the true test of a layout is whether it survives a crappy blown-up cellphone picture in that slot.
- mlent 14y ago
  So true, but hopefully, as phones -- which are replacing digital cameras for many people -- up their resolution, such designs will look better for people with a broader range of mobile devices!

recuter 14y ago

Great. It isn't Schadenfreude exactly, but I hope big changes ups (that they have to make because doing nothing is not an option) like this accelerate their decline. I don't think Facebook will go away any time soon but it will become another Yahoo and that can only be a good thing for the ecosystem in terms of opportunities.

ryusage 14y ago
Except this is a good change, from what I can see. I think it really does make the site nicer to look at. Why would improving the site accelerate their decline?
- drcube 14y ago
  Change. Users hate change, period. Unless you were psychic and managed to change it in exactly and only the ways they were thinking of.
  - batiudrami 14y ago
    Meh, people will complain, and then they will get over it, just like every other iteration of Facebook so far. No one uses G+. I'm relatively technical, and have 40-odd friends there, and the last post was from December 2012 (and the one before that? July!). The problem with Google and social networking is that social networks initially catch on by being 'cool'. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pintrest - they were all initially cool, and got that market right. G+ has never been cool (nor, in my opinion, is Path). If an app is used by a small group of people because it's cool, then it will grow. If it's used by a group of techies because it's better, it will grow until (at most), it covers the entire subset of techies. G+ isn't going anywhere, at least until there's a major rebrand.
  - ryusage 14y ago
    Ah. Well sure, people complain about big changes, every time they happen, mostly because they don't like having to relearn things. When FB introduced the newsfeed, people thought it was supremely creepy and they complained. Now they probably don't remember what it was like without it. When the timeline was introduced, it was the same thing. People complained about business accounts, apps, searching, photo tagging...every major change gets loads of complaints. And yet most people accept or even love those things within a couple months, and FB has continued to grow monumentally. I see no reason to imagine this visual redesign or even the upcoming graph search will be any different.

yvoschaap2 14y ago

> Inspired by mobile Interesting move to adopt a mobile UI to desktop users. I agree having a cross-platform uniform experience makes sense but like YouTube, their left sidebar feels out of place on desktop.

BaconJuice 14y ago

can someone post some screenshots on imgur please? No access at work =/

martinshen 14y ago
http://i.imgur.com/mp2QNad.png http://i.imgur.com/mp2QNad.png Just 2 pics though.
- BaconJuice 14y ago
  soo G+? is this live now? or not yet?
  - macleanjr 14y ago
    They are gradually rolling it out on the web to users over the next month. Then iOS, then Android.
    - umeshunni 14y ago
      Stupid question: What browser are they using in those screenshots? It doesn't look like Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
      - BaconJuice 14y ago
        it looks like it's on an iPad default browser
nwh 14y ago
Here's a full capture. Large image ahead. http://i.imgur.com/QbawFLb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QbawFLb.jpg

HugoMelo 14y ago

It looks so pretty. Oddly reminiscent of G+ +1 for the redesign

zacharytamas 14y ago
+1 for the +1 pun

jgw 14y ago

Is anyone else getting really, really bored of the term "beautiful" being bandied around so much in this type of context? It has long ceased to mean anything at all. I understand the importance of aesthetics in design, but it seems odd to show off the design under the banner "bright, beautiful stories" - surely that depends on the stories?

brown9-2 14y ago
It's also a bit meaningless since no one ever wants to describe the thing they just designed as not being "beautiful".
joonix 14y ago
Beautiful, amazing, and "super" are the three most overused and annoying words that the young hipster tech community uses.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  gorgeous is becoming pretty common too
- enqk 14y ago
  Gorgeous!
- triplesec 14y ago
  that was an amazing observation!
  - triplesec 14y ago
    to note carefully some data here, joonix said in his last post on HN: "G+, Android, and the Note II. A beautiful combination. Unfortunately, nobody I know uses G+ so I don't check much."
    - joonix 14y ago
      I never said I wasn't part of the community ;)

volandovengo 14y ago

if there is a view to just see the pages that you follow, this will keep brands happy. Otherwise - yawn!

NoPiece 14y ago
They did announce such a view, and it should make brands, as well is some users, happy. I follow w00t, but only see the actual sales they post once in a while, now I can see the daily deals daily.

MisterBastahrd 14y ago

I don't like this trend towards icons without labels. They make things prettier but don't increase functionality.

aw3c2 14y ago
I deleted some mails on my phone the other day because there was a new flat icon and I was curious what it did. Turns out it deleted the currently selected emails.

thechut 14y ago

> Join the waiting list Sounds like building fake hype to me...

garindra 14y ago

If anyone from FB is here: is the live news ticker going away? I can't see it in any of the new design preview pictures. I honestly love that feature and would hate it to go away in the new design.

justjimmy 14y ago

This is probably my favorite redesign from a major company so far. Very minimalistic and clean. Also can't help but visualize how Instagram will come into play, with such a heavy emphasis on photos in this new update.

kunai 14y ago
Minimalism doesn't involve hiding features, text, and navigation items away where they're hard to find. Minimalism is about finding new ways to make things simpler, not to hide things that were already there in the first place, arguably reducing usability. See The C Programming Langauge for true minimalism.

fakeer 14y ago

Looks like Google+. Obviously obvious. Difference being, very few people actually use Google+ Though I do not use Facebook actively, but I still have my account and do check it a few days so the new/cleaner look is certainly a welcome break. Now, it depends upon what Facebook "pushes down the throat of this new feed". If it's all the same but larger ads, spam posts or those app posts then nothing changed and if it did, it changed for bad.

saraid216 14y ago
I am never going to get tired of being called no one.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Ding ding ding! The only comment, as far as I can tell, hitting the nail on the head. For ALL the moaning about Facebook's ad revenue, I can't believe it's not being parroted more. I recently posted a status on Facebook, were most of my audience is tech-ish people, and got an overwhelmingly affirmative response to the supposition that the News Feed is increasingly spammy. I don't blame FB. I don't want to be that guy bitching needlessly, but it's becoming a nuisance. Especially when I get way more relevant information through G+ and Twitter. Frankly, FB is becoming more and more about the Pages I like (which arguably, to some, is already nearly spam) and random pages that FB is super desperate for me to like. "Mediaite" anyone?
- fakeer 14y ago
  Yes. Facebook is a business model where the money comes from legally violating users' privacy which the users served into their platter with full consent. I never ever blame them - though I don't like it. Can't speak of the new interface, my account still hasn't got it. Hardly matters. Because now I only check Facebook two a friend's contact details or message a friend for whom the only medium communication has reduced to Facebook chat/messages. Or maybe once in a while to make some smart-ass status update :-) Liking pages is inviting spam. I've stopped doing that. I keep my minimal contact over there. With cell phone, email hidden from outside world and make a point to check the settings time to time. I do not share photos over there any more. I usually do it via Dropbox or just email it, if it's a few pics(Google sees it then :P). Google+ is a lot lot more cleaner and easier but unfortunately there's no one else. I mean for me there's hardly 2-3 guys who share it and I am not switching friends or making new ones to use Google+. Mediaite is a portal I see. I apologise but I couldn't get the context or maybe the joke was lost on me if there was one :P (non USA guy here).

buro9 14y ago

I'm not even on Facebook, and barely knew what timeline looked like, but having just read this I'm impressed... in part because it looks so damn close to work I've got in progress for forums :(

kenferry 14y ago

The design of the intro page is interesting to me. There's a strong attempt to avoid the "boxes in boxes" look that, unfortunately, facebook itself still has. But on the intro page, the only frame is the the browser window itself.

callil 14y ago

They are actually coming into line with the internet in 2013. Universal experience across all platforms? Awesome. New, clearer less cluttered interface? Awesome. I also think the killer feature is the ability to clearly filter your news feed by pictures, updates, people you follow etc. Fot instance, I DO want to be able to follow some celebrities and tv shows on facebook without them cluttering up my newsfeed too much. Now all I have to do is select my following list and I'm there. Ditto for friends + photos etc.

fmax30 14y ago

Is it just me or does the side bar look a lot like the Ubuntu's Unity Interface sidebar?.

why-el 14y ago
It does, and the first thing I thought was: This person is trying out the new Facebook design on a Ubuntu machine, yay!

obilgic 14y ago

Facebook will end up being a photo sharing site.

hisyam 14y ago
Facebook IS the biggest photo sharing site.
chimeracoder 14y ago
End up? That's basically where they started. The popularity of Facebook in its very early days was because they made it easy to "stalk" your friends (and/or crushes) via the photos that they shared. If Facebook hadn't made photographic integration so central to their platform, I don't think they'd have taken off the way they did. That's also why they were so scared of Instagram - they knew how powerful a network of photo sharing can be.

vacipr 14y ago

Another waiting list ? This is really annoying.

jschuur 14y ago

Announced in a YouTube video. I love it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQHYQHnMk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQQHYQHnMk

jschuur 14y ago
Another video, more focused on actually running through the specific changes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PW54Sm99ck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PW54Sm99ck

kunai 14y ago

Glad they finally got rid of Lucida. The typeface sucked with Facebook's aesthetic; Helvetica Neue seems to be far more conducive to the new layout.

msutherl 14y ago
Agreed! The use of Lucida made the site feel very dated to the mid 00's, and it wasn't terribly readable either. Helvetica, especially with full-usage of the font-weights (from light to bold) makes for a much better typographical hierarchy and a more airy feel. Glad also to see that they're moving to a no-borders design and really filling up the browser window.

carlesfe 14y ago

I have an honest question. Does it give them tactical advantage to redesign their site every year? Not that I'm against redesigns, in fact I think that they're getting better and better, but I'm curious whether they do this for the users or for their own sake.

nivla 14y ago
One hypothesis would be to prevent ad-blindness. If you visit the same layout day after day, after a while your mind learns to subconsciously detaches adverts from the content, it will be like it doesn't even exist. New layout, the learning process has to start all over again.
robryan 14y ago
As much as people hate change I think they also hate stagnation.

newman314 14y ago

Is there a way to block the ads on Facebook using say Adblock etc.?

aneth4 14y ago
Yes. Use Adblock.
- Evbn 14y ago
  How does it detect sponsored stories?

nwh 14y ago

I wonder if Layervault is going to file a DMCA against Facebook too. http://i.imgur.com/h07jo3d.png http://i.imgur.com/h07jo3d.png

LandoCalrissian 14y ago
Haha, that's great.

omar7769 14y ago

tumblr did it first, and did it better.

methodin 14y ago

What is it that facebook employess work on daily? I see release of new features fairly often for something like G+ but rarely see anything from FB short of redoing what they've already done. Is this accurate or am I just unaware of a release blog?

chucknthem 14y ago
You can follow the facebook engineering page to see updates on what engineers get up to https://www.facebook.com/Engineering https://www.facebook.com/Engineering
smackfu 14y ago
Their news page gives a good sense of the major new features: http://newsroom.fb.com/News http://newsroom.fb.com/News In general, I don't think they announce minor new features at all, they just deploy them slowly.
- methodin 14y ago
  That would make sense but I wonder why. It is the minor updates that might be more interesting than "we've redone X".
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Two reasons I can think of: Facebook does incremental rollouts, so they don't want to announce features that everyone doesn't have, plus Facebook users are extremely hostile to change (that they know about) so providing a list of changes is counter productive.
    - methodin 14y ago
      That might be true but I do recall that last "cover" update was announced to all but rolled out incrementally as well. The mentality issue might be the true root cause but perhaps if they did more announcements people might get more used to the idea of things changing.

ececconi 14y ago

I'm wondering if I could be more influential with the words I write on Facebook by posting pictures of sentences in a stylized manner.

hayksaakian 14y ago
yes, if reddit is anything to go on.
nsp 14y ago
Absolutely. Pictures have a much higher base edgerank. That's why you see a lot of companies uploading a picture with their promotion, or saving it as an image. Source: http://m.techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/ http://m.techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/ (see edge types)
- Evbn 14y ago
  Oh god FB is actively promoting this shit? (I guess it tracks user behavior, but still...)

nanook 14y ago

That video makes it seem like they cured cancer or something. But no.. they uncluttered the news feed!! Is this really such a big deal?

dkrich 14y ago

The most striking thing about this is its unapologetic rip-off of Apple's product tours.

aneth4 14y ago
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. Neither apologize.
- minopret 14y ago
  I am neither, so I cite sources and add acknowledgments. And apologies. (Sorry to go off topic.)

Dirlewanger 14y ago

You mean all the crap I don't care about is now organized into categories of crap I don't care about?

Kiro 14y ago
Why do you even use Facebook?

lukethomas 14y ago

It's sad that this will be cluttered with sponsored stories.

twodayslate 14y ago

It looks like an improvement to me. I joined the wait list. Hopefully there are not to many "I like the old design better" groups.

jakejake 14y ago

I think it's commendable every time Facebook has pushed through a major re-design like this. They have a about the largest group of change-averse users of any site. Countdown to all of the complaining and petitions that will happen once people learn that their cheese is about to be moved.

robryan 14y ago
The being wanting to hold on to the current design will be the same people that hated the current design when it was released.

instakill 14y ago

No examples of how regular status updates look like...

swalling 14y ago

What is that browser in the intro page? Are they just trying to be neutral or...? I find it really distracting.

ma2xd 14y ago

Designing Facebook is like putting makeup on a pig.

rhizome 14y ago
The pay's better at FB, however.

JacobIrwin 14y ago

Overall I'm impressed. These new Facebook UI updates proves that... .nws_feedContent{-moz-border-radius: 3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;border-radius:3px;} can go a looong way to improve design.

uxwtf 14y ago

Finally. I was wondering if FB will even get rid of its cluttered design. It took them so long... I like mobile first approach and clean user interface. Looking on these screen shots http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=4367 http://newsroom.fb.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetails... still can't get why some huge images overboard the main column (looks like they have negative left and right margins) on iPad and mobile while other pictures/videos have margins? It was already the case on iPhone, but on iPad in the two columns view it looks worst.

Irishsteve 14y ago

Good bye clutter... hello new room for more ads

ww520 14y ago

It's actually pretty slick. I like the small picture icons on the left of each content pane as the content scrolling by.

EGreg 14y ago

I applaud this. Also want to point out that facebook and google are converging -- google is integrating more social into its search (http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry-page-engineered-beautiful-revolution http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-ho...), facebook integrating more search into its social (https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch) I'm glad we are doing something different, because these juggernauts are about to collide and the ripples will be felt everywhere.

WilliamSt 14y ago

How do you get it before everyone else?

BaconJuice 14y ago
work at Facebook.

rorrr 14y ago

This is ridiculous. Currently FB limits your feed photos to 400px (horizontal and vertical). It looks like they are increasing it to 550px. This, literally, makes no sense. Current monitors can easily support 1000px horizontal, and, as a photographer, I wouldn't consider that quality. Both FB and G+ suck as photo galleries. I want to see large beautiful photos, not 550px thumbnails.

saraid216 14y ago
Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I found out that you can use the mouse wheel to enlargen photos on G+.
- rorrr 14y ago
  I just tried it. Mouse wheel just scrolls the page up and down.
  - kschua 14y ago
    It's Ctrl + Mouse wheel
    - skeletonjelly 14y ago
      That's using your browser then no?
    - rorrr 14y ago
      That's just the browser zoom. It doesn't increase the quality of the photos.
      - saraid216 14y ago
        This is a demo of what it looks like for me: http://imgur.com/a/Mja3r http://imgur.com/a/Mja3r Dunno what to tell you. :/ It does need mouse focus, but I imagine you tried that. I did not need to use Ctrl.

return0 14y ago

If you have been following facebook as a developer, you will know that these changes affect the visibility of apps and third parties profoundly. It's not discussed alot, but these changes are circular over the years; there has been barely any innovation since the introduction of the newsfeed. This new sorting they've been working on is the default from a few years back, and the aesthetic is obviously a copy of G+. Facebook may be considered a successful company, but the truth is that its leaders seem to lack in vision and have the tendency to make the same mistakes expecting different results. Zuck had some great intuitions (quick and aggressive growth, treating all users as wannabe attention whores), but the design of the product is circling around itself since 2009 at least. Their platform became a huge success when Dave Morin was in charge, yet ever since, despite the fact that it has been refactored a gazillion times, nothing substantial has been added to it. As a developer of apps that benefit from exposure to facebook, i brace myself for the forthcoming semantic changes in their platform that is most likely to follow.

ameen 14y ago

Is Facebook actually featuring Twitter's Vine on their New Feed video? http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s http://youtu.be/YaQQHYQHnMk?t=37s Also, I like it better, more content / less chrome. The Follow news feed filter was much needed.

mkr-hn 14y ago

It's tumblrbook. I always preferred tumblr's aesthetic over FB and G+, so this is a welcome change.

icarus_drowning 14y ago

As a teacher, I'm somewhat sad that text will be less important, but I can't say that I blame Facebook for emphasizing images over words. While it might be nice to tell 7th graders that they should be able to write because the internet is based on text, it's always been true that any day that might change. And it isn't like writing skills will be less important, just harder to explain to insular children of the middle class.

qwertzlcoatl 14y ago
Does somebody have a tl;dr of this statement?
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  For some reason, a teacher thinks that this will damage Facebook's reputation as a bastion of great intellect and writing.
- dopamean 14y ago
  Or, even better, a pictorial representation?

amy_seqmedia 14y ago

The redesign really feels like it really will translate well to mobile, as in the Facebook Phone. Instead of a grid of apps, you have a strip of categories of information (feeds, events, notes, chat) followed by your favorite apps. Then instead of a separate speed dial screen you have those user icons below that.

nwzpaperman 14y ago

Can't critique HN for it, kudos, but the problem is people are lazy and don't want to read. Tumblr is just another photo sharing platform, IMO. Facebook and G+ are running over each other to show display ads. The fixation on better display ads is constraining creativity when everyone should be focusing on making the Internet a productive place for individuals. The economics matter and shape the UX and server side development.