In an effort to offer more interesting content to gamers and promote game discovery, Facebook has tweaked its layout for iPad users by adding a new side panel featuring game suggestions and other content.
The new panel will appear on the right side when the tab is shifted to the landscape mode, with posts such as trending topics, videos, game suggestions, and so on.
The trends will be prioritised based on what the users’ friends talk about and in cases where not much friend activity for a particular type of content is available, the general trends on Facebook will be displayed.
Facebook said that 70 percent of users played Facebook games on their iPads within 90 days and hence the company is trying to drum up people’s attention towards games.
Dan Morris who leads North American game partnerships at Facebook said, “We are trying to address the games and entertainment usage of tablets.”
“We expect it’s going to give a big boost to games.”
With this new side panel, the company is hoping to provide more entertaining and relevant content that tablet users would enjoy seeing and playing.
The algorithms which determine what content will be displayed will be experimented with different strategies, however, the feature itself is open for all Facebook for iPad users.
“Down the road, some of the data we collect and some of the insights that we gather from this new surface area on tablets could very well inform what we do on other devices too. When it comes to the iPad app, there is plenty of real estate. This was a really logical thing for us to do”, said Morris shedding more light on how the company plans to improve it further.
Facebook may also try showing ads in the panel in future after it notices considerable activity in the panel.
