Facebook today announced a new version of its web site designed to focus more on stories from the people you care about and also leave more free space for adverts. The company has completely rebuilt each story to be much more vibrant and colorful, making them look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps. Shared content is now highlighted along with photos, news articles, maps and events.

In addition to the standard news feed, Facebook also introduced new feeds.

The "All Friends" feed hows you everything your friends are sharing. "Photos" is a feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like. "Music " is a a feed with posts about the music you listen to and finally the "Following" is a feed with the latest news from the Pages you like and the people you follow.

With the new design, now Facebook has the same look and feel on mobile, tablet and web. For example, the left-hand menu is accessible anywhere you go on Facebook. This contains app bookmarks, links to specific friends, the chat and calendar tools, and the live updates ticker.

You also have a way to jump right to the top of News Feed whenever new stories come in.



Another tweak involves auto-generating maps to accompany posts about specific locations. This may encourage more members to use the mobile app's GPS-powered check-in function which competes with Foursquare.

Facebook will be rolling out the new design over the coming weeks on web and mobile. These design updates will be available on your iPhone and iPad in the coming weeks and to Android soon after.

One consequence of the change is that adverts can take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.