I was a bit surprised to see a prompt for me to update my Facebook News Feed this morning. After all, they announced the updates last Thursday and Facebook hasn’t necessarily been the quickest at rolling out new features.

May be the company’s public status.

After spending a few hours this evening with the new layout, I must say I’m quite pleased. Aesthetically, the Feed is ultra clean and its functionality is much more modern. Check out the look below in this snapshot of a single post:

Likewise, the Feed itself is vastly improved. Hover over the black bar at left in the image above and it expands to display navigation points including a link to your Profile, Pages you manage and those online you can message privately. Tagged individuals and Pages display in bold black text and link headlines are in a wonderful serif font.

To the right, you’ll see the various feeds, a new feature that mimiks Google+ (not the only Google nod in this update). The multiple feeds option includes feeds for all the Most Recent posts, Music, personalized ones based on interestes (for example, I have custom feeds for Prairie High School, Washington State University, FensePost and the city of Mount Vernon), and more.

There’s also a Photos feed, a snapshot of which you can see below:

More emphasis throughout the new Feeds is placed on stories; this includes images.

Personally, I love the new layout and look. Of late, Facebook has started to feel a bit stale, and I think the News Feed changes are just the thing the site needs to maintain its relevancy with those who, like myself, have been around since 2004.

These changes excite me, and while others will be adverse to the updates, this will be nothing new. Roll-outs such as these are often met with mixed feelings. For me, I praise the updates and look forward to what Facebook has in store for us with the updated Timeline (which I noted earlier has started rolling out in New Zealand).

Let me know what you think in the comments below.