Facebook unveils redesign plan as it tries to move past privacy scandals

Move is the most visible signal of how the social media giant is starting to emphasise private communications

Mark Zuckerberg declared in March that he planned to shift Facebook away from being a public town square and to private communications. Now, the chief executive is rolling out the first in a series of changes to achieve that.

On Tuesday at its annual developer conference, Facebook unveiled a redesign of its mobile app and desktop site. The revisions add new features to promote group-based communications instead of News Feed, where people publicly post a cascade of messages and status updates.

With the changes, users can more easily message one another and share news and other items with members of private groups