Facebook is looking more and more like television: Welcome to The Cable Game, Facebook!

 

Mark Zuckerberg will be on CBS News' "60 Minutes" in a few hours, and yet already, the Net is bubbling with news about the next redesign of Facebook.   As Steven Musil of CNET  relates, the new look will include a more TV-like look: Musil tells us that it "appears photos take a greater prominence, expanding in size and moving to the top of the page." Or as Jay Yarow of The Business Insider observes, "There is a bigger emphasis on photos, and a the layout is more visual overall."  People love to read about themselves, and their friends, but even more, they love to look at pictures of themselves, and their friends.

For his part, Zuckerberg seems fully intent on turning Facebook into a multimedia player, completely changing the way we consume media--including, inevitably, the news.   As he said just last week:

Anything that involves content or specific expertise in an area – games, music, movies, TV, news, anything in media, anything e-commerce, any of this stuff.

 Over the next five years, those verticals are going to be completely re-thought. There are going to be some really good businesses built.

 Our view is that we should play a role in helping to re-form and re-think all those industries, and we'll get value proportional to what we put in. In gaming, we get some percentage of the value of those companies through ads and credits. But that's all because we're helping them.

If we're helpful to other industries in building out what would be a good solution then there will be some way we get value from that. 

So that's MZ's vision: Everything changes.  And given his track record, who would be wise to bet against him?

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