How to Face Facebook’s New Phase

Mark Zuckerberg’s team is on a fixing spree, peppering Facebook with so many changes that some users actually find it difficult to keep up. The Profile Timeline was one of the first subjects of this major overhaul. Next in line was the ambitious Graph Search that had privacy concerns, which in turn raised privacy issues. Now, we will soon be looking at a new face of Facebook which they claim to be minimalist, user-centric and clutter-free. This major change will be all about the brand new Facebook News Feed.

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More photos less text in Facebook’s brand new News Feed

It was last March when the social media mogul announced their latest and most significant change to roll out yet, and from there, they have advertised the forthcoming News Feeds with a catchy header. The header says goodbye to clutter and welcomes bright and beautiful stories to come.

In Gordon Owen’s article entitled How Facebook’s New News Feed Will Impact Your Marketing Strategy, he related that the leading social networking site will be rolling out a new format in the coming months and the site’s News Feed section will be focusing more on photographs than text.

The switch of focus from text to photos did not come as a surprise for this change is directly relevant to the fact that Facebook users are more interested in photos and other visual content than going over lengthy text.

Not everyone has the time to read and analyze stories that are being flashed on Facebook’s News Feed. The News Feed section has actually seen more photos than text in the last couple of years.

The effects of Facebook’s constantly changing interface

For individuals, the change can either be something good or bad depending on how receptive one is to new operation of the social networking giant. There are those who found it challenging to familiarize themselves with how to manage and navigate their accounts every time an amendment is rolled out. Plus the privacy issues that have been hovering over our heads since the social network’s advent make some people uncomfortable.

For groups and businesses, this could mean a change of approach to get the most out of the new social media game changer. Owen furthered that businesses and other enterprises such as VoIP service providers who depend on Facebook for marketing should be able to calculate how the latest changes will affect their campaigns. It is then imperative that they keep up with the changes to avoid possible losses.

Social media sites have greatly affected how organizations, enterprises, foundations and businesses attract audiences to their respective services or products.

The community-based approach has been adapted from fashion sites like lookbook.nu, to online gaming sites like Dragon City or Diamond Dash. Even blogging has turned to “social sharing” for better exposure. Take Tumblr as an example. Everything has become more interconnected thanks to the power of social media.

So, what happens now? For the meantime, no actual roll-outs are being made to many users and only a fraction of them have seen the changes. Also, the new News Feed is said to be slowly being rolled out in iOS and Android first.

For those needing exposure or in need of an audience, like NGOs and businesses, Social Brite’s John Haydon suggests that ensuring marketing campaigns are tailored to fit the new face of Facebook because the enhanced Facebook News Feed would mean more exposure and engagement but it will also mean that competition will become a lot stiffer.

Will the new News Feeds be a real game-changer in the ongoing social media marketing wars? We will soon see.