Facebook does love to redesign their site, often much to the chagrin of those who use it. After hearing lots of feedback from users after the last redesigns, Facebook has made changes to the homepage and how the News Feed works, many of them this time, definitely for the better.
Now, there are 2 feeds on the Homepage instead of one:
- Live Feed which gives you updates as they happen
- News Feed which is now the revamped Highlights section
What was Highlights in the right-hand side bar, has now been added back into the News Feed view and has been causing some confusion, because like the Highlights section it doesn’t necessarily show updates in chronological order, but rather in what is popular or what Facebook thinks you might find interesting. I really can’t wait until Facebook lets us customize what we would like to see based on what we think is interesting rather than just guessing for us.
The Live Feed view has some welcome re-additions, bringing back when friends are tagged in photos, RSVP for events, join groups and make new friends. Thankfully, birthdays are again more visible and I won’t have to feel so guilty for not sending my birthday wishes.
With the addition of the Live Feed, a new default setting has been added that only allows 250 friends to show updates in your feed. Since you can’t actually choose which 250 friends, you may want to change this setting. To do this:
1. Make sure you have Live Feed set.
2. Scroll to the Bottom of the Live Feed screen and Edit Options.
3. Change the Maximum number of friends shown in Live Feed to 5000 (the maximum friends that Facebook lets you have).
Don’t forget to save the changes.
