Facebook is testing a radically redesigned interface for its app, that sees the News Feed and Stories feature combined into one feed that you tap through like an Instagram or Snapchat Stories. The interface was initially discovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong who found the interface in the android version of the Facebook app.
Currently, Facebook Stories and the News Feed exist alongside each other as distinct interfaces within the core Facebook
app. you can scroll down to see the News Feed
or tap one of the cards tiled on the top of
the app to start scrolling
through your stories. In this new design, Stories and News Feed posts
— as well as text
posts, pictures, videos, and sponsored posts — seem as a part
of the same interface.
Although Facebook Stories were unpopular when they were first launched
back in 2017, Facebook predicted that they’ll surpass the News feed in popularity in 2019. Last September, the
corporate said that
Facebook and messenger Stories
had 300 million daily
active users between them.
The future of the News Feed has been in question
ever since ceo Mark
Zuckerberg said that the corporate would be
pivoting away from permanent
public posts and toward private,
encrypted messaging.
Commentators took this announcement to mean that the News Feed would become a legacy product. Following an executive shuffle a week later, The Verge’s Casey Newton declared that “Facebook’s News Feed era is currently officially over.”
Here’s an example of how Stories
are shown together with regular
Posts.
The left side is a regular photograph post of my
friend changing profile
picture. The right side is my friend’s Story.
And both of those are shown within the same.
Responding to the discovery, a spokesperson from
Facebook said, “We are not presently testing this publicly.” It’s presently unclear whether or not the interface
discovered today will make it to public release. Facebook briefly
experimented with a horizontal interface for Instagram’s feed at the end of last year that
was massively unpopular with users. The
service initially claimed
that the new interface was meant as “a little test,” however it later referred to as it “a bug” in a statement.