Facebook today launched a new, more prominent version of its signature News Feed, the center column of status updates, photos, and videos from friends and brands you’ve “liked,” with much bigger photos and videos and more choices of the updates you want to see. The highly anticipated new design, flagged last week, was debuted at a press event at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. It was expected to feature larger photos, possibly the ability to choose different sorting options for updates, and other tweaks intended to spur people to spend even more time on the social network–and an early look appears to show that’s exactly what Facebook has introduced.

So today, he says, we’re introducing a new news feed. He starts by showing an early version–pretty text-heavy. You need to be able to share any content, and distribute it anywhere. The types of stories you tell when you’re communicating publicly is very different from ones when you’re communicating with a few friends.

In the new design, we’re also giving places the attention they deserve, she says, with bigger map pictures. You might also see things in your news feed that are custom-tailored to you. So you might see upcoming events based on what your friends are doing, or highlights of NPR broadcasts. So at the end of each day, we can show you a nicely packaged story on these, she says.

Chris Struhar, tech lead, explains how Facebook is offering a better choice of feeds that you see. This is key because a big complaint about Facebook lately is that they often don’t see posts from friends because of Facebook’s selective news feed algorithm.