Facebook Inc introduced a visually richer, mobile device-oriented 'newsfeed' on Thursday, in the most significant change to date to the social network's most recognisable feature.

The changes to the newsfeed, whose look and feel has remained largely unchanged since its inception, are designed to keep users active and interacting as well as appeal to advertisers, as Facebook battles Google Inc for Internet market share.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg had singled out the feature as in need of a makeover as recently as January, when the company introduced "graph search" to address inadequacies in allowing users to trawl for information across the world's largest social network.