The new design is a compromise between the ‘old’ News Feed, which used algorithms to present stories Facebook thought you’d find interesting, and the feed Facebook rolled out back in March that consisted of a Twitter-like stream of recent updates. Since this year’s redesign Facebook has used the ‘Highlights’ section at the right hand side of the screen to present items you may have missed, but this was never an ideal solution: for one, you couldn’t see your friends’ comments on these posts, and the small space afforded to Highlights made it easy to pass over.
Today’s change will make the Highlights section redundant, so it will be removed (everything below it will also be shifted higher on the page, which means the ‘Birthdays’ and ‘Events’ sections will no longer be buried). Facebook’s post also notes that the News Feed will include more events, including when your friends become fans of Pages, add friends, or RSVP to an event.
The change has been a long time coming — reports about the merging of Highlights back into the feed emerged as far back as June.
Finally.
I’m sick of seeing every little thing that people post.
totally agreed with you on that…
No friend stories in homepage please! we have “people you may know” for that.
Adding new friend connection stories simply floods the newsfeed and makes it useless. I’m already seeing it a lot. Let there be other one line stories but not this.
This is really stupid. I actually loved the highlights section. It so happens that I am not always logged to FB as to have the time to go back and forth pages and lousy newsfeeds… Highlights was concise, small, effective and let me know what was new in my friend’s lives. I don’t need to see all the info about them, or their posts etc. I just needed that bit of info, say, a highlight. Boo for facebook!
ps/ Jim, I’m right there with you…except for the language though-
I wondered what the heck was happening, I noticed it had been messed up recently.
It would be nice if facebook worked out some of the slowness and issues from the bast few days….
Been a real pain doing anything on FB for a couple of days now.
Sweet. I also found a new social site like Facebook today http://wp.me/pA6×5-5m
I’d like to know the stats on it before I click. If you’ve got a winner. I’m an investor of big things and my currency of choice is used toilet paper.
John, if you are a real investor, contact me. I have something very interesting to show you
Interresting, I give you 5$ m up front, no questions asked. Where should I send the money?
this has already rolled out to my account, pretty cool
Friendfeed?
The real reason Facebook is doing this is to take a bigger share of the pie for themselves. Now they can emphasize native-Facebook apps over 3rd party developers without anyone being the wiser. They say they are doing it for engagement purposes, but last I checked Facebook didn’t have an engagement problem.
How does this change the emphasis on 3rd party apps vrs. native facebook apps?
Either way isn’t it Facebooks goal to make their app as useful as possible, thus more engaging, not to simply create the best “ecosystem” for 3rd party apps? Not to say I agree with it, but it seems to be the goal.
Just my 2 cents….
The whole thing just seems redundant. Instead of making things easier, the “News Feed” buries status updates. The only way to actually know whats going on is use the Live Feed.
Another feature of the OLD News Feed is filtering based on type of news (i.e., show me only status updates, and not the other junk that is in the feed).
Bring this back!
look at the panel on the left. that filter is still there…
I agree. What is the criteria for what information is placed in which feed? The newest thing in my News Feed is 6 hours old. The element is a status, which is shown in the live feed. I have pictures and albums in both as well. What is going on here???
Also, how are these ordered? I have 3 posts in a row on my news feed. One is from yesterday, the next is from 8 hours ago and the last is from yesterday. Whats the logic here?
YAY! Birthday’s are back ABOVE the fold. And I was able to remove a greasemonkey script… sweet.
Rolled out on mine as well.
Great to see highlights removed. That was such a horrible change. Removed a lot of the most important updates and made them much more obscure.
Taking some time to get used to the differences between the two feed types. Still I think it’s a much better alternative.
The way events and birthdays were obscured before was a huge PIA, and that it hid relationship status changes, big events, etc. was also a major bummer.
“Facebook’s post also notes that the News Feed will include more events, including when your friends become fans of Pages, add friends, or RSVP to an event.”
So basically… They’re bringing back the OLD News Feed. You know, the one everyone liked with events and such.
It was stupid of them to throw away the functionality of the old News Feed. Especially when every update to the “new” News Feed basically brings it one step closer to feature parity with the old News Feed.
Trying to copy twitter again …
How so? As far as I can tell, they’re bringing back the old News Feed (now called “News Feed”) and calling the new New Feed “Live Feed” instead.
I really disliked “Highlights,” but now they’re making it the PRIMARY feed? This is absurd. Worse still, there’s no way to control the content on that feed, so it’s completely random. Dislike, dislike.
100% agree. its bananas.
when you switch to the live feed, it sticks for your account, so it will always default to whatever one you pick.
the highlights list is useless to me. i have no idea how it picks whats a highlight or not.
Yeah, but the Live Feed now shows EVERYTHING instead of just status updates, pics and news links. I don’t care about my friends being fans of toilet plungers.
I remember the News Feed from last year allowed me to view just status updates and links. The March redesign took away that functionality. Bring back this functionality! Let me filter based on type of news item, not just groups of friends!
The consensus among my facebook friends is that it is terrible and they are complaining…
I dont mind it…
Ugh, they just can’t leave it alone. Just when people get used to the UI, Facebook changes it.
STOP IT.
Is the profiles messed up or am i the only one who sees so? Try to follow a “has become friends with bla bla” link…
No your not, it’s total bullSiat. I got a entire page of blah blah has become friends with blah blah person. On both the live feed and the other crap.
So now I’ll never see highlights because I almost certainly won’t ever click on News Feed.
Classic case of UI dept. justifying its existence.
First the change in Groups, and now this. Gonna take engagement levels even higher, these two changes. Good stuff!
Okay, actually, this is better, at least for the “Live Feed.” “News Stream” options are just like the old ones.
But for “Live Feed,” at the bottom of the page, click “Edit Options.” You can “Show More” or “Hide” certain friends.
You can set a limit to the max number of friends (default 250) that appear in the feed (and they recommend several). It pops up a neat 4×3 grid of friends, with “recommended” friends in blue boxes, that you can select or deselect nicely to create an ideal stream.
I don’t quite understand this “max number of friends” thing — how does that work, and why? I may be stupid.
It’s a little confusing to see “News Feed” on the left hand navigation column that takes you to Live Feed if you set it that way.
My account was disabled 3 months ago and I still have no replies from disabled@facebook.com What can I do?
Have been using this since morning, I think I like the earlier version better. The Live Feed seems to show so much stuff which was not shown in the earlier version.
Is there a way to switch back to the previous version?
Nice move, but what I really need is one single button that filters out posts made with ANY non-facebook app, because all those meaningless quizzes and games post nothing but countless huge messed-up pictures on my home page.
lite.facebook.com?
I quite like the features as i can read them as digest FEEDS
http://thetechn...now-news-feeds/
I agree with Srikanth Nagandla . I don’t want friends of friends and I don’t want others seeing me becoming friends either.
@ddtoc: There is an option to “hide” those types up updates. If you hover in the right top corner of the “box” you will see a “Hide” drop down. You can then choose to hide the app and/or the person using it. Hope it helps!
great now the iphone app will suck again
Can I ‘hide’ a feed after some time!
Please stop writing a new article everytime facebook does an svn up. I stopped using facebook over 6 months ago.
This sucks, I liked the old way, the whole reason I’m on is to see whats going on with my friends!! Now whats the point?
Dear Facebook,
You stupid, poopy, weather beaten, smelly, dish rag whore. Have you ever considered making ONE NEWSFEED and let your users decide WHAT THEY WANT IN IT via checkboxes in the settings?!!
Cheers,
Another User Tired of Constant Forced “Features”
The move might be due to the reason that people are using FB as a source to share content rather than just a social networking connect.
Another reason could be that people have started to hate all those stupid quizzes right up front on home page.
Seriously,
I’m glad I run Facebook Purity.
The new facebook Live Feed (formerly News Feed – inspired by twitter) is nearly useless now. Nothing but befriending status messages like “xxx is now friends with yyy”. Where can I hide that?
Also – jumping links (buttons) is the worst in user interface design (News Feed View Life Feed). Why could the have not just introduced a new filter called “Highlights” that would (still) be the old “News”? With all this button, link, name jumping who does not get confused?
fosat
fosat
The whole concept of every little thing friends are up to being pushed as ‘News’ is absurd. It’s the most inane crap. While I suppose that depends largely on whom your friends are, I would gather that most people find 95% of what they read on FB utterly boring.
Not a really smart move – I’ve got loads of “X is now friends with Y.” Plus the ‘highlights’ feature was never that great – if you have 500+ friends and one of the friends gets lots of comments for their post, it’s not necessarily a highlight for you. They should just keep it real time… or show the updates from the people who’s profiles you interact with most often.
live-feed got totally useless now. Not interessted in EVERY action my friends do. News Feed is dangerous as only highly commented feeds get into it…unfortuanety they aren’t always the most interessting…
Dangerous? What’s the worst that could happen, half your friends have H1N1 and you dont know? Tune in CNN… just buggin
I love the old facebook…with the highlights section…i hate this version go back to the old one it worked!!!
I actually loved the highlights section. I mean I want to get updates of my friends on my homepage…… and when I update it, I want people to get a highlights on their home page……..
Surely we will find some new method for that……
I do get sometimes emotional and write about it and still don’t wont tell for whom I have those feelings….
I want to tell something to my loved one without telling him/her that it is for them…. I want them to notice it on their home page man…
not every1 goes to news section every day…..
Finding items in the “News Feed” that are over a week old. It’s not clear why they are being featured so prominently when there are tons of other more recent and interesting items.
the new version of facebook purity now blocks “became friend of”, “became fan of” type messages as well as application messages, you can get it here: http://bit.ly/fbpure
The facebook homepage is all messed up now with this new implementation.