Facebook will tweak the user profile sometime tonight to let users fine tune the news items delivered to them on their home page. Currently users can filter news items to see top items, status updates, new photos and posted items from friends.
With the changes, users can opt to see application-specific news items (events, movies, Causes, etc.) or just see all news items without any filtering at all. Specific friends or friend groups can also be selected.
The importance of the news feed as a fresh content engine that brings users back over and over again each day isn’t lost on Facebook. They were the first major service to popularize the idea of a stream of news about a person, and haven’t been afraid to borrow good ideas along the way to make the product more compelling.
Now if we could just get a RSS feed of all those streams out of Facebook, they’d cement themselves as the permanent hub of all that data.
Yeah, RSS would be nice, then you could import some of your twitter follows.
I just wish I didn’t have to click to see status updates. I liked it better in the old Facebook where they just showed up in the sidebar.
Try http://mynews.mazic.in service for creating customized news paper
Aside: time to ditch seesmic? no one uses it
This really make newsfeed much more useful than friendfeed in my opinion. It brings relevancy right to the surface and puts a lens on everything quickly. http://facerevi...ws-feed-filters
kudos to facebook on this one BIG new feature
I actually think Facebook can now be used as an additional FriendFeed client to track updates from your closest friends only. It would have been even better if we could apply different filters simultaneously and see FriendFeed updates from the list of our colleagues only, for example.
Huge improvement. This will significantly improve engagement.
I love the filter by friend list feature – that’s a major improvement in the usefulness of friend lists.
The problem is, the new Facebook is just horrible and overwhelming for most people.
I’m certain they’re going to lose a big chunk of users if/when they start forcing people to switch. Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to has tried the “new” Facebook then gone straight back.
give me a break Dom.
the fact that users are moaning about the change is a good thing. same people who moaned about *everything* that Facebook has done.
John, this isn’t moaning for the sake of it (something which I agree happens a lot when sites “relaunch”). There are serious usability issues with the new Facebook. In trying to simplify profiles, they have made everything else that little bit more difficult to use.
The worrying thing is, as a company, they have a track record of leaping before they look (Beacon, etc.) and if people don’t like the new Facebook, they’ll simply go find something else.
that’s because they are not meticulous as microsoft who carries out plenty of focus groups studies before implementing any major UI changes. (refering to their software, not webware.)
John, its true. I love Facebook but the new interface was not friendly at all. Half the stuff I liked about Facebook was hidden somwhere and I couldn’t find it. I am not one to complain about change and I usually stick without whatever the new thing is, but I switched back to the old interface because it s so much better.
yes yes yes. arrington seeing the sand going through his fist
otherwise do you think there would be a blog post about a minor feature update of facebook?
Calm down, it was already there.
filtering by app was already there in mini-feed, by clicking on app icons, stop saying that they borrowed. Now that is available in news-feed too.
I agree that the new Facebook design is a step backwards. Maybe it’s just a familiarity thing, but it doesn’t click for me.
Another addition to this functionality (besides RSS feeds, I mean) could be ability to apply multiple filters simultaneously, for example to see updates from a certain application for a certain group of friends.
which, only 0.00000001% of the facebook users, will use
One of the last change is that status message are now displayed in a bigger, bold font on people’s profile.
FB again. Yawwwwn.
Interesting concept – In use at Multiply.com since FOREVER.
Multiply.com has had custom filters for user content (The inbox is a customized feed tool) as well as RSS Feed capabilities to other feed readers of both the inbox AND individual user sites.
Too bad nobody cares about Multiply.
Personally, Multiply.com is a great place if you want to stay within your circle of actual friends and family, instead of the online friends who invite you for the sake of having more friends. I think alot of people may stay with FB just because. Not that theyre good or bad, but because they have sponsorship. It proves that they cant have an original idea.
John, YOU may not care about Multiply, but 10 million other people do.
>They were the first major service to popularize the idea of a stream of news about a person, and haven’t been afraid to borrow good ideas along the way to make the product more compelling.
They might have been the first “major” service, but they certainly weren’t the first to have a news feed like this. Even with these improvements, their feed still falls far short of Multiply’s feed system. In fact, what Facebook has today still falls short of what Multiply’s feed system looked like back in 2004, when I first joined.
The uninformed will always miss out.
Facebook rips off Multiply at every turn (theft is, after all, common practice for Zuckerberg). The only reason Facebook is bigger is because they have bloggers like Techcrunch under their thumb writing every little thing about them. Press and media, that is what its all about! As far as which network has original ideas and real technology, Multiply..hands down!. Facebook just has better PR, more bloggers on the payroll, and deeper pockets…it’s not always the best product or service that wins out.
That’s great news! For me, the new design was no problem at all. However, I believe it can be a little too much for new users, especially if FB is trying to attract people from other countries.
However I am not leaving FB with or without changes. All my friends are there and sooner or later all of us are going to get used to. Changing back to the old profile is not a solution either because many of us didn’t like the previous design with all those applications in the middle.
NOTE: NOT the same Linda here.
Would it be possible to see news from applications which not made by Facebook as well?
BTW ,The Rss note is so true…
Funny that they’re allowing more control over this now: My account was disabled yesterday with very ambiguous explanation. Because I share more than 20 items a day in my Google Reader, and I do have that ported into FB’s newsfeed, I suspect they deem this as abuse.
Anyone else run into this problem?
I personally love the new facebook. But the real test is with my non geek friends. Will they like it as much?
Can I opt out of those horribly stupid “Fan of” notifications?
Looks pretty neat. Although I wonder if we might be able to get some additional sorting done for people’s walls. It would be great to have multiple views of the wall content available with a single click (ie. Comments, actions, status updates, etc. seperated out with the default being the aggregated feed).
On a semi-related topic, Michael, did you go to Acalanes? I see the Acalanes High in your filters. If it is one of your underlings, then you have picked quality. Keep up the good work.
My sister went to Acalanes (class of ‘07). I live in Lafayette. I went to Campolindo in Moraga though. What a small world!
I’m still a bit confused about the changes. I think the negative views stem from the fact that most of us don’t like change. At least they are keeping the site fresh.
Love it. The next thing I want is privacy settings for all of the items I publish to my own feed. It’s already available for Photos and Notes, but not for link sharing, etc.
So Techcrunch editors post every time Facebook sneezes. Its surprising that there has been no coverage of Ben Ling’s departure. I wonder why Techcrunch chooses to post only positive news about this overhyped company.
More relevent news has got to be the way forward, Google has recognised the potential of local search and personal search, its only a matter of time before this catches on. Way to go Facebook.
I Dont understand it
good Luck
i Love It
Thank You
It Is Very Good