Facebook released its latest redesign to the News Feed today — a long-awaited update to what it is the veritable town center of the social network.

The company knows that it’s News Feed is the hub of all activity on Facebook as well as the place from which it makes the most money. The redesign will help those who use Facebook to have a better experience on mobile, to see more relevant content, and to view bigger photos. It will also help Facebook to target customers with “richer and more immersive” advertising.

Throughout the presentation, Zuckerberg continued to refer to the New Feed as the “personalized newspaper” for all you Facebook-using folks out there. If successful, Zuckerberg could have just created an interesting social news dynamic with Facebook as the newspaper: full of analysis and commentary, and Twitter as the newswire with quick hits of breaking news.

Check out the gallery below and let us know what you think of the new design.

Main image via Facebook event live feed

One of the big problems with employing hundreds of engineers is that you’ve always got to give them something to do.

That seems to be what’s going on with Facebook, which will unveil yet another redesign to its News Feed at an event next week.

Details on the event are pretty slim (we know where and when it’s happening, and that’s about it), but I have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen afterward: Lots and lots of griping from Facebook’s millions of change-averse users, then even more griping from those angry at the initial round of griping.

It’s enough to make you wish Facebook would redesign the News Feed so you don’t have to deal with it.

In case you’ve forgotten, the last time Facebook made a major redesign to the News Feed was in September 2011, though it’s made a bunch of smaller changes to the feature since then. At the time, Facebook said that its focus was making sure users never missed the most important developments, which the social network determined using its secret formula of signals and algorithms.

I don’t have much of an idea about what the redesigned News Feed will look like, but considering Facebook spent $1 billion on Instagram last year, chances are the new News Feed is going to be very heavy on the visuals. Either way, we’ll see next week.

Marissa Mayer has been Yahoo’s CEO for less than a year, but the former Google exec is already leaving her mark on the Yahoo homepage, which is launching anew today.

The most immediately noticeable thing about the new page is its layout: It’s clean, simple, and deliberate — just like the current Google homepage that Mayer helped design.

But while the new page is clearly fueled by subtraction, it comes with a few major additions as well. Yahoo has added an “infinite news feed” to the page, giving users an unending, customized look at the information they actually care about.

The customization goes further. The new Yahoo homepage allows users to turn off certain homepage items, which means that, if you don’t like “horoscopes” or “Dating” on your Yahoo, you don’t have to see them. Mayer says the new Yahoo homepage is “all about your interests and preferences.” Thank goodness for that.

In all, the new page is a clear and much-needed improvement over the cluttered Yahoo homepage that for so long acted as an metaphor for how far Yahoo had fallen. Mayer may be the best thing that’s ever happened to Yahoo — and its visitors. 

Formerly huge social network Myspace has opened up a completely revamped version of its site to the public today.

Under the new ownership of Specific Media and part-owner Justin Timberlake, Myspace’s goal is no longer about competing with the other major social networks. Instead, the site is focused on cultivating a new focus on both mainstream and underground music groups. The slick new version of the website first debuted back in November, as VentureBeat previously reported.

Myspace is doing its best to pique interest by former and new users. Not only is it making a new single by Timberlake and rapper Jay-Z available for free, it’s also allowing you to sign up with your Facebook, Twitter, or old Myspace account.

Upon signing in, you’ll notice a set of music player controls along the bottom of the page and another ad plugging the single. I was expecting Myspace to prompt me at least three times to “find friends” but it was far more interested in explaining how the bottom music player functioned.

Do you like the new Myspace? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.

In going over the good, bad, and super-ugly design trends of 2012, we were struck by a few really big product changes that threw old interfaces to the wind to keep products looking current, fresh, and beautiful.

As the old year closes, we’d like to pay tribute to the biggest facelifts of 2012, ranked from least favorite to most awesome. These apps went under the knife, and the results were not subtle but spectacular. But interestingly enough, all these nips and tucks won’t be enough to keep users coming back to aging apps. In 2013, we’ll see which companies give more than just a pretty face.

10. MySpace’s new space

The truly hated entity known as MySpace has been in a revolving door of design overhauls for the past couple years. So of course we saw big new changes for 2012. And while we called the new look “killer” in our review, we’re still pretty sure the site will be more “Thriller” (read: walking dead) than killer in 2013.

The story: “Designed for artists and their fans, the new MySpace is not a redesign. It’s a new product with a new purpose and a design meant to evoke emotion. MySpace wants to draw people into relationships with creatives and the content they produce.”

9. The New Digg

After many a stumble and many a fall (and many an executive departure), Digg struggled to revitalize its brand and its traffic in 2012. The new site scraps all of old Digg’s algorithms and interfaces, leaving little room for gaming the results and lots of room for questions.

The story: “By contrast, it took Digg’s new owners about six weeks to completely reimagine the site as well as formulate a plan to restore Digg to its former glory. It was completely rebuilt from scratch, which is why the team is calling this the new version 1. … The new Digg is already more inviting than the one I saw over the past two years.”

8. Foursquare’s redesign

Facing increasing competition from place-based features on major social networks, Foursquare pulled out all the stops for a new look and feel in 2012 — one that simplified its interface and encouraged interactions between users.

The story: “Alex Rainert, Foursquare’s head of product, told VentureBeat that the company decided five to six months ago that it wanted to redesign its experience from the ground up. ‘We decided to pull the pieces apart and put them back together again,’ Rainert said. ‘We want to create the richest experience possible.’”

7. Rdio’s double-whammy

One redesign wasn’t good enough for ol’ Rdio. In 2012, the streaming music service had two back-to-back redesigns. The first, announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas, showed off new social features. The second introduced some minor tweaks that made Rdio look more than ever like iTunes.

The story: “The new design takes a healthy amount of influence from Apple’s ubiquitous iTunes player. The left-hand bar features playlists and navigation, and the center shows songs and albums. The right-hand bar, with social activity and connections, appears to borrow from streaming music competitor Spotify. Unlike iTunes, which is steeped in years of minor tweaks and updates, Rdio’s web-based player is probably much faster for many users.”

6. Vimeo blows it up

In 2012, web design in general got an overdose of the high-end magazine aesthetic. Big, full-bleed images and glossy, minimalist interfaces were all the rage. Vimeo took that approach with videos as well. The result was good enough to print.

The story: “Vimeo has essentially had the same design since 2007, and while users of popular sites often protest design changes, this one comes off as much more sophisticated and smooth. Vimeo CEO Dae Mellencamp told us, ‘There were tons of features and functions we wanted to add, so we’re using a new code base. We’ve put video front and center.’”

5. YouTube’s multiple personalities

Not to be outdone, YouTube made some changes in 2012, as well. Overall, it seemed the Google-owned video kingpin finally realized it had two distinct user groups: the content creators and the content watchers. So YouTube gave the creators their very own app while turning the main site’s focus toward the lean-back viewer’s interests.

The story: “I’ll admit that the only time I really scan through my feed/guide of activity on YouTube is when I first log in. Beyond that, I rarely think to scan through it for new stuff to watch. These changes may fix that.”

4. eBay goes Pinterest-y

The Pinterest Grid was one of the trends we identified as leading the pack in 2012. One of the more appropriate and interesting implementations of that retail-friendly aesthetic was the new eBay homepage.

The story: “eBay’s previous design is similar to something you’d recognize from late ’90s websites, with products/auctions arranged into boring vertical lists. The only eye-catching elements were thumbnails for each auction listing. By contrast, the new web interface concentrates much more on product images. The homepage adopts the familiar pinboard-style design used on Pinterest, while the product and profile pages are much less cluttered.”

3. Facebook’s continued Timeline-itization

We did a deep dive on Facebook Timeline back in the fall of 2011 before it had officially launched worldwide. Even then, we knew this aesthetic would mark a huge turning point for the network’s engineer-driven utilitarian look and feel. In 2012, the Timeline look-and-feel marched on, taking over Pages, friendships, and even the company’s mobile apps.

The story: “Facebook design guru Sam Lessin, who captained the Timeline design, said in Tuesday’s show-and-tell session that Timeline ‘wasn’t ever meant to be just about people, just for humans. It’s a phase shift for the company overall and how we think about identity. … We always start with people. We’re Facebook, that’s kind of what we do … and then we do it for other types of organizations that also have a story and want to be able to tell it.’”

2. Twitter’s new profiles

The “new-new Twitter” saw the once-simple site transform into a sleek social network with plenty of bells and whistles to keep easily distracted users entertained. In a nod to universal human vanity, Twitter also rolled out new profile pages, complete with big, glossy photos.

The story: “An all-new header photo — somewhat reminiscent of Facebook’s cover photo — now helps your Twitter profile stand out better. Rather than just a few pixels for a headshot or a logo, the new header photo can display much more: multiple images, a portrait in a setting, or whatever your creativity allows within the limits of about 520-by-260 pixels.”

1. LinkedIn’s seismic shift

LinkedIn had been working with basically the same, stodgy interface for far too long. For the network’s older crowd of professional users, that aesthetic was probably not too much of a stumbling block. But in 2012, new designers and developers started revealing slick new mobile apps, pretty profiles, and a radically more beautiful and more interesting way to read news on the site.

The story: “The new stream is intended to be lightweight, easy to scan, and easy to interact with in a way that doesn’t burn up too much of your own personal CPU. Quick sharing, liking, and commenting now seems more natural from the new homepage. ‘We’re always looking for new ways to make the homepage experience better, more efficient and a place where you can come everyday to get what you need to be productive and successful,’ said LinkedIn exec Caroline Gaffney. ‘This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality.’”

Grand Prize: Metro, Windows’ salvation

While users may or may not be confused by Microsoft’s new arrays of flat, colorful panels and ever-changing mosaics, Metro (whatever you want to call it – we’re sticking with Metro) is the toast of the design community. The aesthetic looks good on everything from mobile home screens to old-school desktop email. It’s even inspiring more than a few knockoff looks around the web and mobile apps — a slimy but sincere form of flattery that shows Microsoft still has what it takes to surprise and delight us.

We knew Windows 8 had won when someone ported the design over to the iPhone. But Metro shines brightest in — where else? — the new Windows 8 operating system.

The story: “Windows 8 is vital to the future of Microsoft and the PC market because it blends a touch-centric interface with the Windows we’ve known for years. It’s not for everyone, especially casual Windows 7 users that refuse to relearn Windows. But power users and those who embrace change well will find a lot to like here.”

Top image credit: NinaMalyna, Shutterstock

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Security company Lookout Mobile prides itself on protecting and finding your phone, and educating you in the process. The company redesigned its entire app, with a special feature that should help you find your phone even after the battery is dead.

Lookout Mobile’s app protects 25 million devices in 170 different countries, and of those millions of users, the “find my phone” feature is the most popular. Indeed, the company says it locates a phone every three seconds. It does this by listening to the GPS signals in the phone and mapping where it is — similar to Apple’s “Find my iPhone” app. But if your phone is lost or stolen and the battery dies, you can probably kiss that device goodbye.

Lookout’s latest feature, Signal Flare, gets us just a little bit closer to being able to find the phone even in its Sleeping Beauty state.

“Worldwide, 30 percent of people lose their phones and cannot recover them because their battery died,” said Lookout senior product manager Abheek Gupta in an interview with VentureBeat. “That’s a problem because it sounds like there’s not much you can do about it. Except that one of our engineers found a way to flag the location of the phone as the battery was on its last legs.”

It seems that right before a phone dies, it sends out a veritable S.O.S. In reality, the signal tells the tower that it’s dying, that this is the last signal it will put out, and records the location. It’s a definitive, “I am dead, this is where I rest,” and it’s up to you to go to that place and retrieve the phone (unless someone swiped it, or its in a moving vehicle).

Forget if my phone is stolen: This is useful if it dies somewhere in my couch cushions.

Kyle Barton (pictured right), one of Lookout’s engineers, found the signal and started playing around with it during one of the company’s downtime sessions. These times are reserved for employees to work on their own side-projects. (You’ve got to love when “Silicon Valley startup culture” actually produces something useful.)

“Well, honestly, when the company started I would tell people, ‘Hey, this is so awesome, you can locate your phone and then they would always come back with, ‘Well, what if your battery’s dead?’” said Barton.”[I'd say,] ‘Well, okay, so if your battery is dead, you can’t locate. But we’re going to work on something so you can at least know where it was’ … at least you have a breadcrumb trail.”

The feature is opt-in only, as it does track your GPS. It will send you the “signal flares” in an email, so that it doesn’t bother you if your phone simply dies in your pocket.

The redesign also comes built in a with a new feature that protects phones against a new “attack” called “click to call.” Here, attackers could enter “MMI codes,” or man-machine-interface codes, into a URL. When entered on the phone, these codes can do things like reset the phone back to factory settings and other, non-malicious annoyances. The aftermath of one of these attacks isn’t completely devastating (you know, unless they reset your camera and you lose all your pictures), but it has the potential to be, which is why the Lookout app is already wired to warn you if a clicked URL is harmful.

“We take security pretty seriously internally as well as externally, so … we’re wearing hidden tin-foil hats,” said Anbu Anbalagapandian (pictured above), the engineering lead for Lookout Mobile.

Luckily, not all phones are affected by MMI codes. You can check to see if yours is here.

The app is otherwise very sleek. It has grown up and taken advantage of Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean for Android devices (an the iOS version is definitely in the works). Lookout also released a new mobile web app to keep people safe while they’re browsing. The company warns four out of 10 people run into a malicious link on the open mobile web. The app will identify those links in a pop up and help users maneuver away from them.

LinkedIn has unveiled a pretty new homepage today. The redesign strips away all the clutter, leaving you with news from your network and a chronological and algorithmically weighted stream of updates from your professional contacts.

In short, it’s looking a lot more like a professional version of Facebook or Twitter — or a Yammer that includes news and extends beyond your own company. It’ll start rolling out to all users within the next few weeks.

The redesigned homepage comes at the end of a string of mobile redesigns and new mobile launches — beautifully designed apps that were sexy enough to leave the LinkedIn homepage looking like the proverbial redheaded stepchild by comparison.

But the new homepage seems like a much better fit with the rest of LinkedIn’s increasingly good-looking product suite. Here’s a sneak peek:

LinkedIn product manager Caroline Gaffney wrote today on the company blog that the overhaul was intended to give users a simple, social, modern way to navigate through the news and happenings in their professional lives.

“We’ve revamped the entire Homepage experience with a new look and feel to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you. This simpler and cleaner design makes it easier to navigate the page and quickly find the updates you’re looking for — whether that’s a news article your boss has recently shared or it’s to see who has just started a new job,” Gaffney said.

The new stream is intended to be lightweight, easy to scan, and easy to interact with in a way that doesn’t burn up too much of your own personal CPU. Quick sharing, liking, and commenting now seems more natural from the new homepage.

We’re hoping to see a new profile page in the near future, as well.

LinkedIn revamped its mobile apps last summer, and it rolled out an all-new iPad app just a couple of months ago. Both are clean and pared-down yet full-featured, and they pull the best influences from modern social media apps.

Also, both featured some pretty exciting technology under the hood, including a heavy reliance on Node.js.

“We’re always looking for new ways to make the homepage experience better, more efficient and a place where you can come everyday to get what you need to be productive and successful,” Gaffney said. “This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality this year.”

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Digital transactions leader PayPal has started rolling out a brand new design to its main website for some users Tuesday. [See update below.]

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the lucky ones to see the updated site, but I can say for certain that it’s long overdue. If I had to put the old site into a metaphor, I’d say it was sort of like an extremely useful accountant friend who is out of touch with fashion from the previous two decades — smart, but always goofy looking. Like an above-average Dreamweaver template from the late ’90s, it has tons of tabs along the top navigation with  really obscure descriptors that force you to click through each one when you can’t find something.

By contrast, the screenshots I’ve seen of the new PayPal website design show a full makeover worthy of the hard-earned money you spend through its transaction service. The top title is a hokey message that reads: “When it came to updating our website, we brought in an expert: You.” Obviously this is a lie, because most people (including the folks in charge of the previous design) are not design experts. But I’ll swallow the cheesy marketing line just this once since the site does look very clean, as you can see above.

Much of the cluttered mess of the old site is now gone. The navigation now consists of three very distinct options: Buy, Sell, and Transfer. It’s also got a pleasant image of a happy couple sitting at the edge of a dock, which I’m assuming will change over time.

PayPal is scheduled to officially announce the site redesign tomorrow, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. We’ll be sure to give it a full walk through once everything does go live.

Update 6/20/2012: PayPal has confirmed the redesign in an official blog post, as previously anticipated. Most of the post goes over the methodology for why the design was needed, and if you’ve ever taken a design theory class its kind of restating the basics. However, it is nice to see the company paying as much attention to its website as it did with its PayPal Here launch.

The new design should roll out to all U.S. customers within the next few weeks, with a global roll out to follow soon after, according to the company.

From the blog post:

Our old site focused more on the products and less on the way that our customers wanted to use our products. As part of this renewed focus on the customer, we are making the login process as easy and intuitive as possible and have reworked the overall navigation of the site to ensure users can get to what they want quickly. We’re also dramatically simplifying our menus and label solutions to showcase our most popular offerings, and now have an “explore” link that will highlight the newest and most exciting innovations we’re working on.

Screenshots via Sean Ludwig & Meghan Kelly

Popular streaming-music site Rdio has launched a new redesign that clearly takes a ton of cues from iTunes, the company announced today on its blog.

“Change is good,” the company wrote on its blog. “Which is why we’re pleased to share that starting today, the new Rdio is available to all. We’ve taken everything that already makes Rdio the best way to discover and listen to music and redesigned it to be even faster, simpler and more social.”

While Rdio has not attracted as much attention as Spotify in recent months, it still has quite a few fans. The company continues to battle it out with MOG, Rhapsody, and a host of other streaming radio services. Rdio gives listeners a limited amount of free use or you can listen to unlimited music for $5-to-$10 per month depending on whether you want mobile app access.

Just looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the new design takes a healthy amount of influence from Apple’s ubiquitous iTunes player. The left-hand bar features playlists and navigation and the center shows songs and albums. The right-hand bar, with social activity and connections, appears to borrow from streaming music competitor Spotify. Unlike iTunes, which is steeped in years of minor tweaks and updates, Rdio’s web-based player is probably much faster for many users.

Compare that to the old, more colorful Rdio, below.

Here’s Rdio’s list of new features:

• A new look and feel — More than just a boring spreadsheet of songs, new Rdio puts music and people front and center.
• All in one place — Spend less time navigating. Music, playlists and your network are in one view.
• Add entire albums to playlists — One of Rdio’s most-requested features is now a reality.
• Browse even faster — Find music at lightning speed because pages remember your place. Browse a continuous stream of albums, explore one and easily return to the place you left off.
• Listen with your network — From the People Sidebar, see what your network is listening to in real-time and listen along with one-click.
• Let your network inspire your listening — Wondering if you’ll like an album in the charts or why it appeared in your Heavy Rotation? Under every album, hover over photos to see exactly who listened to it.
• Sharing made simple — Drag and drop music into playlists or collection and share with others on Rdio without missing a beat. Music can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email.
• Create private playlists – In addition to public and collaborative playlists, now private playlists can be created and shared with just a select few.
• Easily discover people to follow — Check out Rdio’s latest music influencers in the People Sidebar and find others to follow such as artists, critics, record labels and brands.

You can watch Rdio’s redesign introduction video below for more details.

Hot-as-heck startup Pinterest has just introduced brand-new profile pages, its first major design change since its major rise in popularity over the last six months.

Pinterest launched in 2010, but recently it has seen astronomical growth and counts as one of the top 10 social networks on the web. According to recent comScore data, Pinterest users spend an average of 89 minutes per month on the site, which easily bests Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ for their site engagement. Pinterest still lags behind Facebook in terms of user engagement, which has users spending an average of 405 minutes per month on its site. The hot opinion Q&A app Thumb also claims to have twice the engagement of Pinterest.

With all this hubbub, you can see why even a relatively small change like profile page design might be a big deal for users. The new profile pages make it easy to see each person or brand’s boards and pins, with pictures easily sorted for viewing. Clicking on a board opens up the layout most Pinterest members are already accustomed to. Previously, the profile showed up as a vertical column on the left-hand side.

Next up for Pinterest will likely be an iPad app and open API for developers. It also will add the ability to pin content from sites like Hulu, Vimeo, and Netflix.

Let us know in the comments if you like the new design changes.

Pinterest profile screenshot: Kathy Myers’ board

Only paid subscribers will be able to see the new Rdio, which is available immediately. The new look was announced Tuesday at SXSW Interactive in Austin by Rdio vice president Malthe Sigurdsson.

“Machines are a nice help, but they can’t do it alone,” said Sigurdsson of music recommendations, in a subtle dig at the algorithms employed by other music services like Pandora. “No matter how good they get, they still don’t have taste.”

Accordingly, Rdio is putting people front-and-center in its new design. On the right side of the screen is a People Sidebar showing the various friends, musicians, or critics you follow. You are able see what someone is listening to right that moment, and if you are feeling it too, you can click and start streaming the same song.

When you hover over an album or song, you can see who in your network has listened to it. Use that information to decide if you should give new music a try, or to judge your friends for listening to Lana Del Rey.

The entire Rdio user interface has received an overhaul. The main view is now unified, with a navigation bar on the left and a continuous stream of content in the middle that automatically populates when you scroll down. The display will resize to fit your browser, and if you leave the main page to check out album details or anything else, when you return you’ll snap back to the exact spot where you left off.

There are a few other nice bits rolled into the redesign, like easier sharing over Twitter, Facebook, and email, and the ability to create private playlists and share them with select groups of people.

Rdio, which is not making its user numbers public, has a lot of competition from streaming-music companies such as Spotify, MOG, Pandora, and Rhapsody. The service currently has over 15 million songs available. There’s a limited free option, and paid subscriptions start at $5 a month for unlimited web and desktop streaming. The price bumps to $10 a month to add mobile and offline access as well.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Cloud storage powerhouse Dropbox has redesigned its website and main interface with welcome new features including an all-powerful “action bar”, a Lightbox photo viewer, better search, and more, the company announced Thursday evening.

Dropbox engineer Trevor Berg writes:

One of our main goals was to slim down dropbox.com and focus on the star of the page: your stuff. We’ve put all the tools you need at your fingertips, but only when you need them.

The new action bar at the top of the screen does it all. Think of it as a multi-tool that adjusts to your needs. You can use it to sort your files by name, date, size, and type. Or, if you select a file or folder, the bar will change to let you perform a variety of actions on your selection.

Another important addition to its revamped interface is a Lightbox photo viewer that allows you to see your photos and videos in full screen. On top of the photo viewer, the company has added thumbnails for all kinds of image and video files so you can actually figure out what the hell “IMG47565.JPG” is without having to open or download it.

Other great features that Dropbox has added include the ability to drag-and-drop files, improved multiple-file selection, and faster search. Plus, the company says to “expect a lot more cool stuff in the next few months.”

San Francisco-based Dropbox has raised around $257 million in funding to date, with the majority of that coming from its massive $250 million round last October. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners, Valiant Capital Partners, and Hadi and Ali Partovi.

Check out more screenshots of the new Dropbox redesign below:

A subject's eye-movements are tracked while testing the Kayak.com redesign.

How big of a deal is a site redesign, really? For travel-booking heavy Kayak, it’s everything. That’s why it took the company six months, one $30,000 eye-tracking device, and countless A/B tests to perfect its new website look, which is being unveiled today.

The eight-year-old flight-, hotel-, and car-reservation company recently released a new iPhone and iPad app. Inspired by the minimalist user interface of the iOS app, Kayak decided to give its website a similar pared-down look aimed at helping customers find what they’re looking for more quickly.

Online travel is projected to be a $313 billion industry in 2012, and while Kayak and other major players have voiced concern about Google’s recent foray into flight search, the relationship is more tangled than it appears on the surface. Google’s competing flight search feature is powered by ITA, a company it bought in last year. ITA still provides U.S. fight search results to Kayak, which happens to power Bing’s travel search results. (And not that they’re hanging out in the same travel-industry bars or anything, but ITA and Kayak headquarters are a 35 minute drive apart.)

Kayak co-founder and CTO Paul English told VentureBeat he’s not threatened by Google’s flight-booking tool. “Its first flight product was pretty geeky. It was a nice layout but it was focused on a technical audience.” English also said consumers aren’t yet comfortable using Google directly as an e-commerce engine, as they are with sites like Amazon. “They don’t think of it as a place to shop or buy, and travel is an important enough purchase for people that they want a site they trust.”

To hone its new site design, Kayak brought test users into its lab in Concord, Mass. The subjects were told to complete a task, such as finding a hotel or flight, while 10 to 12 engineers observed the process in an adjoining room. The engineers tracked where the subjects looked using an eye-tracking tool. By observing shopper’s facial movements and where they clicked, Kayak was able to remove distracting clutter and simplify the site layout.

Gone is the black bar across the top of the page, affectionately referred to as the “unibrow” by Kayak employees. Advanced features such as searching by code-share flights or long layovers are still available, but they’re hidden by default since the majority of visitors are mere “amateur” travel bookers. Automatic resizing has also been improved to accommodate increasingly larger screen sizes.

Kayak thinks the new design will increase conversion rates. The company will continue to tweak the look and feel of Kayak.com after today’s launch.

Here are some screens of the new, very iPad-esque site, as well as a screenshot of the very first Kayak.com design:

Despite being the most popular online video service in the world, YouTube’s current website design is not very appealing compared to other streaming video sites. So any change to its current design is something to talk about.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the new design is heavily influenced by Google+ integration. All subscriptions and channels you follow are organized into a left sidebar, which makes it easier to see videos that are shared from people within your social circles on Google+.

On top of those subscriptions is your avatar and links to your profile information. While I’d argue that this also isn’t the prettiest of user interfaces, it’s much better than the screen full of overflowing video thumbnails that YouTube currently uses. The new design is also more in line with the company’s experimental Cosmic Panda video player redesign, which VentureBeat first reported about back in July.

The new Google-plus-focused design also adds more sizing options to videos, makes recommended content pop out when clicked and includes a new favicon (the little icon in your web browser bar next to the URL).

At this point, we don’t know if the new design will eventually roll out to all users or if it’ll remain in testing mode. We’re reaching out to Google for more information and will update this post with anything new.

[Screenshot via Faceblog.in.th]

In the video, which is now marked as private, Gmail user experience Designer Jason Cornwell says, “We’ve completely redesigned the look and feel of Gmail to make it as clean, simple and intuitive as possible.” For the most part, this is true based on the images in the demo.

The overall design is largely taken from a Gmail preview theme, which is currently available to all users. However, there are plenty of new additions and drastic changes worth noting. First of all, there’s a ton of white space — making elements like the “important” arrows and message labels stand out like a sore thumb. Unread messages in the Inbox stay white while old messages are slightly shaded.

The Gmail navigation has also been refreshed. The top nav bar now consists of buttons with action icons instead of text descriptors ( e.g. – archive, spam, delete, etc.).  The left-sidebar navigation is much cleaner than the current version. Links to Contacts and Tasks are gone, or at least hidden from view. The most prominent element in the sidebar is a brightly colored “Compose” button. Opening a message brings you to the default conversation-view mode that features profile pictures next to each message snippet.

Honestly, the new Gmail design looks dangerously similar to Facebook’s message center. (See side-by-side comparison below.) The navigation (left sidebar), advertising placement (right sidebar) and list of people in the conversation/suggested users (top of right sidebar) are in identical locations on both Facebook and the new Gmail. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gmail eventually started treating all messages between two people as one continuous conversation (with no distinction between Instant Messages and emails) like Facebook does.

Unlike Facebook, the inbox doesn’t have a fixed width and users can choose one of four display density types. This is a nice addition that’s also available in the preview mode theme.

And speaking of Gmail themes, the video also revealed a variety of new “high-definition themes”, which were little more than high-resolution background photos that cancel out everything else on the page. Seriously, if you use one of those photo backgrounds Gmail instantly becomes Flickr. Hopefully, Google will allow users to upload their own custom themes when the refresh rolls out to everyone.

We’ve embedded screenshots from the Gmail video below. Let us know what you think of the design changes in the comments.

Despite being the most popular online video service in the world, YouTube’s current website design is not very appealing compared to other streaming video sites. The current site is cluttered with hyperlinks and video thumbnails. The white background is the brightest portion of the page, which distracts users from the video-watching experience. Also, navigation tool bars and menus are more complex than necessary.

The Cosmic Panda experimental redesign fixes many of the current site’s design problems. (See screenshots of the new design embedded below).

The new design is darker than the current version and borrows many visual elements from streaming video sites like Hulu and Vimeo.

Cosmic Panda puts a greater emphasis on the video player, which has a dark gray background — making the video the brightest element on the page. Viewers also have the option of changing the size of the player by clicking one of four buttons located below the progress (loading) bar. Videos that are part of a playlist display a horizontal row of thumbnail images below the player, rather than along the bottom of the page.

Also, fewer thumbnail images of related videos appear in the new design. The thumbnails that do appear on the site are larger and have subtle design elements. such as off-white boxes surrounding the image, thin borders and light gray text. The result is a much cleaner design that allows users to focus their attention on the content, rather than what they plan on watching later.

YouTube launched Cosmic Panda to the public Thursday. Users can enable the new design via the TestTube dashboard — the company’s testing ground for engineers to incubate new feature ideas. Anyone who doesn’t like the site’s new look can toggle off the new design at any time, according to the company.

In a blog post announcing Cosmic Panda, the company stressed the importance of design changes:

With nearly 8 years of video uploaded and 3 billion views logged every day on YouTube, it’s clear you like to watch and share YouTube videos. While you’re watching your favorite or new videos, we at the ‘Tube are obsessing night and day over how those videos are presented. Our team is constantly experimenting, tweaking and playing with new ways to make your experience exactly what you’re looking for.

After using Cosmic Panda for a few hours, I’m convinced it offers a far better experience than the old YouTube design. Honestly, I doubt many people will switch back after testing it out.

Click the images embedded below to enlarge.

The original layout for the PSN and the PlayStation store was heavy in text and had a lot of information on the screen. The new look is more streamlined, with bigger images and more accessible information, according to the report. It will be similar to the streamlined design of Microsoft’s online gaming network, Xbox Live.

Sony’s online network is a critical service that competes with Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service among others. There are also 948 games now available in the PlayStation Network store, as well as 4,000 pieces of add-on content for games.

Sony’s PSN was offline for 24 days in the United States, and longer in other countries. The company took the PSN down after hackers were able to break in and steal sensitive information about more than 100 million customers. Sony laid indirect blame for the PSN’s downtime on hacktivist group Anonymous, which typically rallies a group of loosely connected hackers under moral or political banners.

PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable owners were unable to download new content for their games and play online with other players. The downtime came at a critical time for two major releases — Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat, both of which prominently featured online play and had received a good deal of critical acclaim.

Sony offered PSN users free games and a whole batch of other welcome-back goodies — like free subscriptions to the company’s premium PlayStation Plus version of the PSN — to entice players to continue using the PSN. The packages will probably appease a large number of console and handheld gaming device owners. But a lot of gamers — myself included — already own those Triple-A titles, and find they aren’t really worth as much as they used to be.

VentureBeat previously published a timeline for the PlayStation Network outage.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Facebook

The design is a departure from all previous incarnations of Facebook’s homepage and borrows design elements found on Twitter and Gawker Media blogs.

The top navigation bar, sidebar, footer and ad spots are now stationary portions of the page. The only parts of the page that retain the scrolling movement ability are the news feed and the Happening Now feed that Facebook began testing last week. (See the screenshot embedded below for a visual example of the design changes.)

One big thing to note about the new design is its potential impact on advertising. Ad spots will have a greater impact and leave a longer impression since they now remain visible at all times. More effective advertising could translate into higher revenue for Facebook, which is why I think the new design will end up rolling out to everyone soon.

It’s been well over a year since major design changes were made to the site’s homepage. That could have something to do with the history of backlash from Facebook users whenever drastic changes are made. If Facebook decides to implement this new design, you can expect history to repeat itself.

Image via Inside Facebook

The new version makes it easier to find new sources to follow and connect to friends via Facebook, Google and Twitter accounts. It also offers a custom “My News” page that shows you friends’ story submissions, comments, and Diggs, as well as selected feeds. Users can still access the traditional top news feed, but the “My Feed” section is now the default page for the site for people who have signed up.

The redesign comes on the heels of former Digg CEO Jay Andelson’s resignation earlier this year as the company found trouble staying in the black. Founder Kevin Rose has stepped up in the meantime.

Digg also cut 10 percent of its staff in the second quarter this year as it faded in popularity with the rise of other social outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

Digg recently came under fire after users and publishers were discovered gaming the site to direct traffic to websites they preferred and creating “Digg armies” to kill stories they did not want to reach the front page.

Google is giving location a prominent place in its upcoming search redesign: Your whereabouts may be displayed right underneath the search bar.

Not only that, the left-hand sidebar (which has been in the beta test for a long time, but hasn’t been fully released) gets a touch-up. The heavy bars are gone and the icons are cleaner and brighter in color, compared to redesign screenshots that were floating around last month (see below).

Google spokesperson Nate Tyler says the changes are part of an experiment. The company has been tinkering with different icons and displays for months, so it’s hard to say with certainty what will ultimately come through the redesign.

“At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on Google sites all over the world,” Tyler said. There’s more information on how the company runs these experiments here.

Google has factored location into search results for awhile without explicitly telling the user that the company knows their whereabouts. It recently launched ‘Nearby’ search in February, returning results from local venues overlaid on top of a map.

Other companies also use your IP address to send you location-specific content. Facebook has long served location-sensitive advertising on its website while Twitter recently launched a feature letting users geotag where they are directly from the site.

Old Redesign:

Filed under: Business, Social, Top stories ]]> http://venturebeat.com/2010/03/25/google-search-location/feed/ 0 Location may get a central place in Google's web search redesign vbkimmaicutler google-search redesign-february http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/04/facebook-redesign/ http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/04/facebook-redesign/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:21:55 +0000 Kim-Mai Cutler http://venturebeat.com/?p=158445

Does Facebook have a birthday present in store for us?

The site turns six years old today, and a couple of redesign shots have been seen in the wild. Drop.io founder Sam Lessin tweeted these screenshots. In them, search has …

Does Facebook have a birthday present in store for us?

The site turns six years old today, and a couple of redesign shots have been seen in the wild. Drop.io founder Sam Lessin tweeted these screenshots. In them, search has taken more of a prominent look, moving to the center from the right.

Most of the bottom navigation has been moved to the left-hand bar. Ads and applications get their special bookmarks on the left-hand, which the company has talked about since last fall.

What’s new in Lessin’s version is that chat has been moved to the left as well. Instead of appearing in the bottom-right hand corner in a pop-up, your online friends will stay continuously visible on the page.

It doesn’t seem to be consistent, though: another user, Laura Watkins, shared screenshots in which chat looks like it’s in its original position.

Filed under: Business, Social, Top stories ]]>