It’s a Tuesday so that must mean it’s time for Facebook to make a change. The social network just announced a few changes that will be noticeable at some point tonight in your news feed.
They’re adding what’s being dubbed a ‘real-time ticker’ that is quite obviously aimed at competing with Twitter. It’s designed to keep you up to date on what’s happening at a steadier clip rather than having to periodically go back and check your feed. In other words, Facebook really wants you to not ever close the Facebook browser window. Ever. Pretty please with sugar on top?
Change #1
Your new News Feed is now designed to showcase all the big events in your Facebook friends’ lives since the last time you logged in. Think of it as a snapshot of what’s been happening since you’ve been gone.“News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper,” Facebook says in a blog post.
Thankfully, this change means Facebook will be removing the ‘Top Stories’ and ‘Most Recent’ tabs at the top of the news feed. Personally, this differentiation never made sense to me and was quite a nuisance. Instead, you’ll now get a smarter news feed that learns about what you like and interact with. Then, it’ll adjust to show you more of that stuff. This could be problematic as it may start hiding news items that it may think you don’t want to see…but really do. Hopefully this won’t happen but you never know.
If you haven’t been on Facebook for three days, it will pull out the top stories from your network. This means you won’t miss important relationship status changes, photos or big life events.
If you’re a more frequent visitor of Facebook, your News Feed will be filled with more recent content in chronological order. The social network is also giving you the ability to tweak the top stories in your News Feeds by marking or unmarking updates as a “Top Story.”
Change #2
The second adjustment to your news feed deals with photos. Basically, they’re now going to be larger and a lot more prominent. Gone are the days of tiny thumbnails and more text!
Now you’ll be able to see larger images and perhaps be more tempted to click on the photos (thus serving up more advertising dollars / pageviews for Facebook) This was one of the top user feature requests.
Change #3
The last change is the addition of a news ticker on the top of the right-side column. It’s been in beta testing for a couple weeks and is finally ready to roll out. It’s basically a real-time feed of all the activity happening in your network. It will primarily be used to focus on the stuff happening right now in your feed. Your news feed will then serve as a more detailed look at what’s been happening in the past.
The news ticker on the right is actually quite nifty. When you click on an item in it, a little sideways hover window will appear where you can comment, like, and basically just interact with that particular news item.
Recent Changes
These three changes come on the heels of a couple recent updates to your feed. The first was a recalibration of Friend Filters (to compete with Google+) and another was the addition of a ‘subscribe’ button (to compete with Twitter).
The social network will be making more announcements this week at its f8 developer conference, where it is expected to unveil a music and media-sharing platform and a major profile redesign.
Image gallery is below. Check it out and let your fellow Edudemic readers know what you think about the new features and what you expect your profile to look like after the big f8 announcement.
Facebook's News Feed now delivers top stories to you based on the last time you logged in. That way, if you haven't logged in for a few days, you won't miss important life events in your News Feed. Users can also adjust their News Feeds by marking or unmarking updates as "Top Stories".
Photos will now be larger and more prominent in News Feed
Users that user Facebook more frequently will be greeted with more recent status updates and activity.
The new ticker appears on the top of the Facebook Chat bar on the right-hand side. Unlike News Feed, the ticker displays the real-time activity of your friends.
Clicking on an item in the ticker opens up a windows where you can interact with your friends through likes and comments. This is designed to foster instant conversations.
This article needs a copy editor….."These three changes come on the heals "
Frankly, nobody is interested in Facebook's ego war with Google. They use FB for a specific purpose and FB is making it more difficult to use their site for the intended purpose. User attrition can only result – presumably that's not why they did it.
Funny- I don't have the ticker. And I don't understand the Top Stories rationale. And people have posted how to get the newsfeed back in chronoloigcal order and I do not have a button that I can click in the upper right of my screen in the notification screen! sigh….
Turns having friends into a political minefield. Why has everything got to be rated, even people – ridiculous. And I don't even have a Newsfeed button anymore.
And do you know what, I've got better things to do with my life than arse around figuring out how to get it back and how to configure my fb settings. Stuff it. My friends know where I live, I'll meet them later. In the real world, where I don't have to slap a 'subscribed' sticker across their foreheads.