Facebook Post Updates Coming Mid August

Beginning August 19, your Facebook News Feed will look a little different. As a follow up to their announcements at F8 earlier this year, Facebook is making moves to give users a new design that’s “simpler, faster, more immersive and puts your communities at the center.” The changes will be rolling on out mobile first, with desktop updates to follow. What do social media marketers need to know? Two things.

The maximum height for media will reduce to a 4:5 ratio. The tallest aspect ratio for vertical media in the new News Feed is now 4:5, photos and videos included.

Fewer lines of copy will be visible. With the updates, only three lines of text will be displayed on posts in the News Feed before users are prompted to click “See More.” That’s around 135ish characters, if you’re counting.

This is how things will look.


(from Facebook)

Additionally, according to Zuck and friends, they’re making these changes to make it easier to use the same assets on both Facebook and Instagram, which can be great from an efficiency standpoint, but also further blurs the lines between the two social platforms.

These new image changes shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the platform has been suggesting that ratio as a best practice for a while now. The copy restrictions could be a challenge, since there’s even less space to grab a user’s attention and no guarantee they’ll click through to read the rest of your text. So, keep visuals within those ratios, messaging short and sweet, and your eyes peeled here for any further social media updates!

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