Facebook planning major revamp to enhance news feed

Mumbai: In a move to match Google news and Twitter feed, Facebook has been testing a new revamped feature by including sub-categories to make it’s news feed feature even more content-specific and interactive.  

According to a report, Facebook has been silently testing a new, sectioned news feed, with topics such as World, US, Sports, and Food. The company also confirmed the development to Mashable yesterday.

While the primary (default) section will be retained, the company did not confirm whether the new feature will launched. The report also pointed out that the new feature is not entirely new and a similar feature was available on iOS previously, but some aspects of it haven’t been witnessed before.

A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable that they have received feedback from users regarding their desire to see options that give them access to more stories via Facebook.

"So we have been testing a few feeds for people to view more and different stories from people and Pages based on topic areas,” the spokesperson said via an email.

A Twitter user by the name Tom Critchlow has also shared a series of screenshots that showed new customisation options on a mobile related to the news feed.

The revamped version of the news feed will have sub-sections such as World, US, Sports, Food, and numerous other topics at the bottom of the screen and users can choose their preference by swiping left or right.

Once a user selects a category, the news feed automatically updates to show all trending news in related to the selected section.

This feature will not only give users access to a wider subdivision of news but also help make it more preference-based, and interactive.

Also, this feature, if launched, will help the social media giant to compete with services such as Google News and Twitter feed.