The next time you get into a political argument on Facebook, your comments will look sleek in brand new speech bubbles.
Starting Tuesday morning, Facebook is rolling out some updates to conversations on its newsfeed. Comments under posts will now look more like an iPhone text message exchange, each bon mot enshrined in a light gray speech bubble.
“If a friend leaves a comment on your post, you can actually imagine the bubble jumping up and down with excitement,” said Paddy Underwood, a Facebook product manager.
Making a few design tweaks to your apps design isn’t a big deal. Unless you’re Facebook and your minor changes will be seen by a quarter of the world’s population. The speech bubble is one of a handful of changes coming to the Facebook mobile apps and website. As with all Facebook updates, there’s a chance that even the smallest adjustments will anger a few faithful users.
Following another popular trend, most recently embraced-by (and mocked-on) Twitter, profile photos will appear as circles instead of as squares. Underwood says round photos are starting to be widely recognized as representing individuals online.
The icons that line the top of the feed are redesigned, and the globe that represents new notifications is now a bell. Links will show the name of the publication on top of the article title, and fill the width of the news feed. Navigation on the top of the page has been standardized, so you can get back to the news feed no matter what hole you’ve fallen into. Other small changes include larger Like, Comment and Share buttons, and more color contrast to make text easier to read.
Facebook hopes the changes will make the service a little easier to navigate. It says the specific tweaks were the result of months of research and tests.
