Facebook announced on Tuesday at F8, its annual developer conference in San Jose, California, that it is redesigning of its core app and is emphasizing mainly on two of its most critical features: events and groups. Facebook says that it will place groups front and center as a cornerstone, events are getting a fresh coat of paint as the most used parts of Facebook. Messenger app is also getting a new design and it will become simpler and faster for users to navigate.
The changes, announced Tuesday make Groups, even more, bigger part of the Facebook user experience. A new design for the mobile app highlights the Groups that users have joined, and now also shows a personalized feed of activity across all the groups that the people are a part of in a special tab. The service long known as the “big blue app” is also getting a color change — it will be framed in white instead of the company’s traditional hue.
“We’ve completely redesigned the Groups tab and made discovery even better. The tab now shows a personalized feed of activity across all your groups. And the new discovery tool with improved recommendations lets you quickly find groups you might be interested in,” Facebook’s blog post reads.
“There are tens of millions of active groups on Facebook. When people find the right one, it often becomes the most meaningful part of how they use Facebook. And today, more than 400 million people on Facebook belong to a group that they find meaningful,” the company said in a blog post. “With this in mind, we’re rolling out a fresh new design for Facebook that’s simpler and puts your communities at the center. We’re also introducing new tools that will help make it easier for you to discover and engage with groups of people who share your interests.”
Another new feature called ‘Meet new friends’, Facebook wants to help people connect with strangers which have a mutual or shared interest like working at the same place or studying at the same school. The company is making certain efforts that groups become visible in every part of the app, so it’ll start promoting groups in areas like Marketplace and Watch.
Facebook’s Messenger app, which allows users to send and receive text and video messages, has also received a redesign meant to streamline the app’s performance, according to the blog.
For the events feature, Facebook introduced a new events tab which is placed right next to the groups tab in the new menu bar layout, It has a richer map view for seeing where the events you’re interested in are in proximity to one another.