Facebook Tested Their New iOS 7 Look Right Under Everyone’s Noses

With iOS 7 finally making its way onto iOS devices, there have been a couple of apps that have since updated itself to keep in theme with the new iOS 7 look, and Facebook was one of them. Admittedly for some, the new design of the Facebook app could prove a little jarring, especially with the navigation having been changed, and access to the News Feed, Messages, and Notifications making its way to the bottom of the app instead of the top, but for some, such as myself, this was not a complete surprise as it turns out that my version of Facebook had always been like this, and little did I know it was in preparation for iOS 7.

According to the folks at The Verge, they ran an interesting story on how Facebook had secretly been testing their new iOS 7 app right under the noses of about 8 million users with none of them having a clue that they were part of it, which is why you might have noticed that some of your friend’s Facebook apps on iOS might look different from yours.

To achieve this testing without having to ship beta versions of its app, “Facebook built an entire system for creating alternate versions of the native app within the native app. The team could then turn on certain new features for a subset of its users, directly, and measure the results. Starting in early 2013, the team put together a system of “different types of Legos — that we can reconfigure really easily … and see the results on the server in real time.” Pretty cool, huh? So what do you guys make of the new Facebook? Are you digging it?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Facebook, iOS 7