Not ad revenue, but low-res netbooks killed News Feed redesign, says Facebook

Earlier this month, Facebook **began rolling out** its new News Feed design, which had been significantly changed from what was announced last year. Facebook had revealed that it had updated the design based on the feedback it received from some users who had been testing the new UI.   However, UX designer Dustin Curtis had written in a blog post that the social network dropped the 2013 redesign because it was bad for ad revenues. “After an investigation into the problem by Facebook’s data team, they discovered that the new News Feed was performing too well. It was performing so well from a design standpoint that users no longer felt the need to browse areas outside of the News Feed as often, so they were spending less time on the site. Unfortunately, this change in user behavior led to fewer advertisement impressions, which led, ultimately, to less revenue,” Curtis explained in a post.In response to his blog post titled “ Whatever goes up, that’s what we do”, Julie Zhuo, a product design director at Facebook has released a post that reads, “ Whatever’s Best For The People, That’s What We Do.”   She wrote, “Every design has its day of reckoning. And that reckoning is with the people you design for. If the change you’re introducing is better for them—if it helps them do the things they want to do more easily, if it’s more loved—then your design has succeeded.”   Zhuo further went on to explain why the old design was dropped. She cited reasons like the older design was great for sharper, larger monitors but most people have smaller, low-res monitors. Moreover, the older design didn’t work very well on 10-inch netbooks. As stated earlier, she also explained that the older design made it tedious to navigate across the site.   Talking about the revenue prospective with the older design, Zhuo explained that it was quite positive for ad revenue. “But that’s not a reason to ship a worse design. The old design was worse for many of the things we value and try to improve. Like how much people share and converse with their friends. Or how easy it is to navigate to your groups. Or how efficiently you can get the information that’s important to you. On top of all that, most of the people we showed the design to told us they didn’t like it more than what they previously had,” she added.   Do let us know what you think about the new redesigned News Feed section.