Newscom
Facebook has unveiled a new home page function, which makes it easier to comb through updates.
Facebook rolls out revamped news feed
Want to cut down on the dreaded status update chatter? A new Facebook functionality should help.
By Matthew Shaer | 10.23.09
We’ve all experienced it – the noise that comes from 400 friends updating their Facebook feeds at the same time. Well, now Facebook has trotted out a new tool which should help us cut back on the chatter. Starting today, users will be able to toggle between “Live Feed” and “News Feed” options.
Think of the “Live Feed” like an open faucet – the status updates come spilling out a billion miles-per-hour. New photos; new observations; new links. Your friend Stan, telling everyone about this fabulous new jar of pickles he recently purchased from the corner grocery.
“News Feed,” on the other hand, hands the filtering duties over to Facebook, which automatically separates the wheat from the chaff. “News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story,” Facebook wrote on the company blog.
Earlier this year, Facebook announced it now had 300 million users, a staggering figure that indicates how globally popular the site has become. In a blog post at the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was looking forward to expanding Facebook’s reach even further. “We’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The new filtering option will probably help.
So will the recently rolled out Facebook Lite, a pared-down functionality is aimed at late-adopters and other folks still learning how to navigate the wild world of social networking.
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2. tommy gunz and roses | 10.23.09
I would like to know where i can sign up to get the old facebook back. I hate that they keep changing it
3. Angry Faceboker | 10.23.09
This new feed system is terrible! This is supposed to help gain members?
Well currently there are over 55,000 members of the ‘I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK GROUP!’ after less than an hour. Other groups include the ‘Bring back the old facebook!’ and ‘We want our old newsfeed back.’ Is this the response you were hoping for?
NOT HAPPY JAN!
4. Jack Hughes | 10.23.09
Altho i can see why people would fine this to be useful, the truth is it is a massive inconvinience. I don’t want facebook to decide what i will like and not like, thats my job on facebook. I think the new facebook will quickly become very unpopular.
5. Megan | 10.23.09
The new filtering option is terrible and confusing. Before you had the option to just completely ignore the friends updates by hiding them, and heck, if Stan is my friend and he bought a great jar of pickles sometimes you just have to tolerate it. Now with these new filters I’m completely bewildered, News Feed picking stores they’ll ‘think i’ll enjoy?’. I’d rather look for myself to figure out what I might enjoy, rather than them deciding for me. The Live feed for some odd reason chooses to publish every random detail that my friends change or do on their profile which I really don’t care about and didn’t have to see before. Why should I care that one of my friends is now friends with a person I don’t even know? I don’t know. Facebook and its blatant disregard for what it’s users want astounds me. Many of us have suggested for a simple ‘dislike’ button which proved to be a wildly popular, with more than three million people agreeing. It would be nice, I guess, to have at least a little heads up? To tell us the changes were coming? A poll to see if we like them or not? At the very least, an option to switch between the old way and the new way?
6. Laila Smith | 10.24.09
I really dont like the Live Feed. it does’nt have your privacy anymore,everyone on the friends list can see the comments people make on pictures even though they are not friends of those particular people, and also it announces who your new friend to all. I like the old one better because of the privacy.
8. Michael LeBlanc | 10.24.09
Your new feed is horrible. I don’t know anyone who has 400 actual friends. If you chose to have that many friends good luck keeping up with the posts. This is very confusing and for someone who uses facebook to keep in touch with actual friends is sad. I feel like I have to post things twice.
10. AWms | 10.24.09
there is like over 20K people over on FB that hate what you have done to the feed…. there is all types of groups/fan pages , in which I belong, that express the hate. I really don’t give two flying figs who my friends friend or what they have joined, if I did I would go to THIER page, I don’t want to see it on mines…. and who are you to catogorize what popular or not…..
11. terry garner | 10.24.09
my live feed isnt working now i have changed my list from 250 to 5000 but my live feed isnt working since your change
12. Angelika Lancsak | 10.24.09
Well..I was a little bit confused:) What’s going on here? But even FB is improving from time to time:)
I just like it…
13. Marilynn | 10.24.09
Love the live feed, but wish we had filtering options for it–for example, I’m really not interested in who friends who. Newsfeed is not doing a good filtering job–mainly old stuff.
14. Jere Hodges | 10.24.09
If they really want to help us.. give us the ability to select/deselect what news feeds we want.
For instance, give me the option of turning off notifications of when someone I know has “become friends” with someone else.
Give me the option of seeing (or not seeing) when my friends - in different lists - post updates.
Give us itemized selections - so we can tune our feeds ourselves.
Jere Hodges Jr (on Facebook)
15. Gaelic Gal | 10.24.09
Who let the kids at the controls? The Live Feed couldn’t have been more poorly designed if they’d tried. One of the basic tenets of User Interface is that you never change focus on the user; it’s disorienting! On this new Live Feed you can be in the middle of reading a post and your screen will jump somewhere else entirely and not only do you lose minutes trying to find out where you were, but if you’re like me, your blood pressure spikes to near stroke level.
16. Katie | 10.24.09
This new feed layout is redundant and terrible. I don’t hate it because it is new, I hate it because it is an unwaranted change. Facebook should poll its users before making drastic changes. This is terrible.
17. lolafalana | 10.24.09
New fb is horrible and unasked for. EVERYONE: Please - go to Settings>private settings>click on News Feed and Wall> unclick the box “add a friend”. No one needs to see who you are becoming friends with. Thank you.
18. CJ Baker | 10.24.09
absolutely hate it! They should give you the ability to use it change back to the old facebook homepage!
19. Jim | 10.25.09
Problem is, both News Feed and Live Feed now show way more than the News Feed did before. So if the idea was to clean things up, it had the opposite effect. Sometimes it even shows things out of chronological order, making it even worse.
However, I found a workaround, click on “Status Updates” on the left menu and the News Feed will look like it always did.
20. Bill | 10.25.09
Remember when the news feed first came out and everyone hated it? Now it’s the primary face of Facebook. The news/live feed options represent a way to manage that feed. People hate it now because it’s new and it’s disrupting what they’ve become used to. After a while, you will all get used to it and its benefits and never want to go back to the old single feed.
21. Rachel | 10.25.09
I don’t like the new newsfeed and neither does anyone I know. Watch out FB or you’ll go the way of Friendster if you don’t pay more attention to what your users want.
23. carolehodges | 10.25.09
How Big Brotherish!! Why can’t I decide what I want to see? Now how do I ensure that my peeps see me?
How did they decide all this without feedback??
24. Totoro | 10.26.09
I have only one word for this update it SUCKS! It’s more confusing than the old one and there’s no privacy anymore. I know that when you are on a social network you give up a part of your privacy but like other people have already complaint about; do I really have to know that one of my friends has made a new friend with someone I don’t even know or commented on someone post who I don’t know. I don’t see the important stuff anymore because my feed is filled with things like A is now friends with B, or A has commented on C’s picture. If I want to know that kind of information I’ll look it up myself.
25. Melissa M | 10.26.09
here’s the scoop, if you want the old FB back, simply go to the top left corner of FB and click on more (@bottom) click status updates,drag to the top, then click it, it then becomes the old FB.
26. Dome P | 10.26.09
Melissa M: That’s only partially true. It limits it out to only status updates from friends. What the old facebook did was give you status updates, photos/video notifications, and link postings (also app updates(read: mafia wars/farmville), but you could choose to hide these). If you change the stream to Status Updates, you would not see these things unless you also checked Live FEED or News Feeds. Remember, those highlights were also on the right side of the page. My biggest problem is that Live Feed has no options to customize it. I don’t want ALL the information about who became friends with whom, who joined what groups, or who became fans of some page. It’s basically information overload and forces you to search through several more updates just to see items that are relevant. FB should have included options for toggling these things on and off, or had an option to switch back to the old style (similar to Status Updates) and then monitor how many users use which style and then decide on FB’s direction from there.
The problem with News Feeds is that it’s very much like the old Feed, except for the fact that feed postings are delayed due to FB evaluating and filtering it so that FB can determine if you want to know about it or not.
Here’s the bottom line:
Status Updates are Status Updates ONLY (No links, pictures, or videos)
News Feeds are delayed and filtered by FB (They decide what you want to see)
Live Feed is everything under the sun as it happends which makes the page very “busy” (It’s like reading a 100 page report vs 20 bullet points)
27. Joy | 10.26.09
I think it’s alright, but I don’t need to know when friends become friends of someone or when friends become fans of something. Too much information in the news feed & not a lot of privacy.
29. jlh | 10.26.09
There are over 500,000 people and growing in the SWITCH BACK TO THE OLD NEWS FEED!!! group on Facebook, and it was just started. Look it up on Fb and join. Many of them have the same complaints voiced here. Live feed includes too much info, resulting in privacy issues and unwanted content, and status and news feed miss some things a user wants to see.
30. George | 10.27.09
Live Feed users have no way of filtering what goes into the feed. The increased noise makes it USELESS for any kind of business networking. People are very confused. Facebook has ignored some critical user interface issues with this launch.
The protest group “I hate the new Facebook” is now 75,000+ members.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=176238016984
31. Jeff Reid | 10.27.09
I stopped reading but the first 12 posts were negatives…hopefully they (Facebook)are reading this also…but I doubt it!!!!
33. Scott | 10.30.09
News Feed picks stories that WE think you’ll enjoy - I LIKE IT MORE WHEN I CHOOSE WHAT i LIKE!!
35. Carol | 10.31.09
FB is becoming less about fun and more about work finding what you want. And, when FB decides to make changes, why can’t they send a notice to their users rather than just letting us discover these changes with no idea what’s going on or how they work?
36. Kathy | 11.02.09
HATE, HATE, HATE the new format. I used to leave FB open all day and enjoyed some witty banter with others who are home all day. This new format SUCKS! I don’t even want to log on to it now. Thanks for ruining something that used to be really wonderful!!
37. carol | 11.04.09
I hate hate hate the news twitter feed. I used to go on to keep up with family and friends …now I can’t find anything. I have stopped going on so often because it is terrible. Facebook is chosing for me what I want to see! I can choose for myself like I did before you brains changed it. I do not know one person that likes it. Do you think they will listen to the millions complaining …of course not. It is now an invasion of my privacy telling peolpe who I became friends with and what group I join. CHANGE IT BACK LISTEN TO YOU USERS!
38. KT | 11.06.09
The changes are horrible. Whoever is making these surprise design changes has no sense of practicality whatsoever. Facebook is confusing even its seasoned veterans.
39. VH | 11.13.09
I prefer how it was before. I’ve really tried, but this new interface is redundant and I can’t see as much at a glance as I used to be able to…have had to hide a bunch of friends because I’m getting info I don’t care about and it’s taking up the whole page. So, I spend a log of time hiding and unhiding. I really should just drop the whole thing!
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1. Alex | 10.23.09
I dont really like it, its confusing me