Facebook Restructures News Feeds

Facebook News Feeds Allows Users to Switch Between Two Different Views..

by CNET

Published: Fri, October 23, 2009 - 2:40 pm CST Last Updated: Fri, October 23, 2009 - 2:44 pm CST

(CNET) - Facebook members will start to see a new look for their home page "news feeds" on Friday, with the design now featuring a toggle view between a main view, featuring the top stories from their friends list based on their Facebooking habits, and a "live feed" featuring real-time updates from their whole network.

"When the user wakes up in the morning, you go to Facebook and you see (the) news feed," product manager Peter Deng told CNET News. "You see the stuff that you missed, the best of the previous day, to basically catch you up on what your friends have been up to."

This is sort of bringing Facebook's design back to an earlier version. This spring, likely inspired by the hype surrounding Twitter's "stream," Facebook converted its home page news feed into a feed of live updates and relegated "highlights" to a small column on the right side of the page. Plenty of members absolutely hated it, even though Facebook execs have since said that the redesign didn't result in a drop in traffic or usage.

Deng said that the design released Friday, which will be rolling out to the social network's massive user base over the course of the day starting at 10 a.m. PDT, was put together by "responding to a lot of feedback along the way."

Birthday and event alerts are now more prominent, and the news feed also contains stories that stopped appearing when Facebook launched the stream-inspired home page: relationship status news, photos added and tagged, and the like. Brands' fan pages will be worked in there, too, but Deng said Facebook does not allow them to pay for higher placement or prominence. User controls will stay the same: you can opt to see fewer updates from a given person or fan page.

The upcoming redesign was leaked earlier this week via a document distributed to advertisers. But Deng said that the company has "made a few user interface tweaks since then."

WKRG.com » News Stream » Technology

Photo

WKRG.com Related

Discuss this in the forum

Email to a Friend

Printer Friendly

lovepeace Says:

Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 11:23 am

I have found it soooooo annoying. Not only is trying to get used to changes (again) annoying, but I have no interest in getting an update about who people became friends with and that sort of thing.

Lindaloo Says:

Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 4:43 pm

It didn’t result in a drop in traffic but it sure as heck was not convenient on face book. Still isn’t for that matter. There are major glitches in the games such as Farm Town. You do not get back the proper coins. You can’t post stuff to your wall nor publish anything.