Facebook's New Homepage – Changing How Brands Interact and Market

Here’s another Facebook update for your News Feed: less than a week after revealing its redesigned newsfeed (learn more about this here), Facebook announced another game changing move with new user profiles.

On March 13, in the latest social network news, Facebook described what its users can expect to see in their profile updates in a blog post titled “Improvements to Timeline,” outlining new ways for users to share their interests and what the new timeline layout will look like. Look out for these changes on Facebook as it integrates new profile designs in the coming weeks:

Profile layout easier to read

Like the new homepage design, Facebook’s user profile updates will make content and posts easier to read and feature. When users first view their new profiles, they’ll notice that while Facebook has kept their cover photo and profile photo looks the same, there are now separate tabs for Timeline, About, Friends, Photos and More.

When viewing the tab for Timeline, users can see an entirely new and more organized profile layout from the old timeline. After receiving feedback about the previous timeline profile design being hard to read at times, Facebook has streamlined the design. Rather than dividing the timeline layout down the middle with interchanging posts on either side, the new profiles will shift all posts to the right, increasing readability. On the left side are sections that parallel the top tabs, featuring sections for About, Friends, Photos and Recent Activity.

Use and share with the add button

As the latest social network to change its design, Facebook focused on user ability to share content. When accessing the About page, users might notice that the page layout looks very similar to another rival social network’s: Pinterest. On their About page, users can display favorite books, movies, music, TV shows, and more using a tiled layout and share their interests like they would “pin” links and images on Pinterest.Similar to how Facebook users can “like” a page or brand using the like button; the new add button is an easier way to share with their social networks. To use this new feature, start by clicking the add button icon that looks like a plus symbol to add pages and interests, and more to add from other user profiles to your About page.

Feature app integration and more content

As another way to highlight recent activity and share content, Facebook allows users to feature apps on their profiles. Instead of only listing apps or showing app use through posts, users can place apps in their own sections on their profiles. Using this feature to make their profiles more content rich, users can add apps like Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012, to stream pictures on profiles.

With the new Facebook homepage forcing brands to change how they promote themselves, the profile redesign is also cause for creative ad solutions. By integrating apps and sharing features more prominently into user profiles, brands will have to adapt along with this new profile redesign, as it is changing how users consume and share content on their profiles. Brands can use this redesign by analyzing user profiles of what brands or pages they like on their About pages. Using this information, they can effectively target and create personas around what users are sharing and featuring on their profiles.

As the latest social network to undergo design changes, Facebook proves that social networks improve with user feedback. With Facebook’s changing its homepage and user profile designs in the coming weeks, users and businesses should anticipate a new way to share and connect on their own social networks.