Facebook plans to replace News Feeds on its mobile app with multiple, topic-based feeds that it is testing at present. This is seen as the next step in the process the social network initiated in October by allowing selective users see specialized interest feeds on the web. Jason Stein, founder and CEO of social media agency Laundry Service, was the first one to spot the new feeds.
More than one News Feed
“Facebook is adding customizable interest-based feeds. A newspaper made up of all the world’s newspapers,” tweeted Stein.
The new mobile design bears a lot of similarity with the working of Facebook’s Paper app as it automatically sorts posts from people and pages followed by users into different sections or feeds. The traditional News Feed remains in place with secondary feeds supplementing it. These include “Style,” “Travel,” “Headlines” and more.
“People have told us they’d like new options to see and have conversations about more stories on Facebook around specific topics they’re interested in,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge. “So we are testing feeds for people to view different stories from people and Pages based on topic areas.”
Facebook also testing Marketplace feature
Along with the new News Feeds, Facebook has also been working on a wider rollout of the Marketplace feature for a few months now. The company tested this feature, simply known as Shopping, in October, but it got buried behind the main section of the app.
On Tuesday, reader Andrew Watts sent screenshots to The Verge showing the Marketplace tab featured in a prominent manner. In the new layout, the Marketplace icon replaces the Messenger icon at the bottom of the iOS app, and the Messenger icon has been shifted to the top near the search bar, similar to its location in the Android app.
When a user taps on the new icon, it takes them to a shopping page where they can browse through the various items sold by the Pages they have liked and buy them as well. Confirming the change, Facebook told The Verge that it has changed the design, and for now, it is accessible only to a small percentage of users in the U.S. The company has no plans of rolling it out widely right now.
