In context: Steam is a pretty big platform now, and it's only going to get bigger over time. In many ways, that's a good thing for users: more games means more choices, after all. However, as the size of your digital library increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with the latest game-specific news. That's where Valve's latest Steam Labs experiment comes in.
The experiment, aptly called the "News Hub," is the ninth official Steam Labs feature, and it's available on mobile and the web right now (it's not accessible in the Steam desktop client yet). By default, the News Hub will display quite a lot of information: it shows news posts from Steam itself (usually update changelogs or major announcements), as well as games you have in your library or wishlist.
The types of posts you can expect to see include livestream and event announcements, game-specific content update reveals, sales reminders, and more. Of course, this feature wouldn't have much value if it was just a slightly-prettier version of Steam's existing News section – what lets News Hub stand out is its customizability.
You can specify exactly what types of news you want to see in the Hub. If you're like me and don't care about event or livestream notifications, you can switch them off. If you don't care about Steam client updates, feel free to disable those as well – the choice is yours.
After experimenting with the News Hub a bit myself, I can certainly see its value. Though it's an in-dev feature that might never make it into Steam proper, we think a full release is inevitable. It's incredibly useful and it doesn't seem to have any major bugs to speak of. All in all, it's a direct upgrade over Steam's existing News system, and we feel certain that most users will agree.