Facebook introduces News Feed and Live Feed

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Facebook began a roll out this weekend of a modified version of its homepage that allows users to jump between two different versions of the feed: the Live Feed and the News Feed. Users will be able to view a summary feed of the most interesting activity that has happened in the last day as well as a real-time feed that displays what is happening right now. The changes were announced in Facebook's blog.


The Live Feed displays your friends' updates in real-time- similar to a Twitter-like feed. As long as you remain logged into Facebook and select this tab, you will continue to see activity from your friends in real-time. You are able to change what is posted to this feed by clicking the "Edit Options" tab at the bottom of the homepage.

The News Feed displays the top items your friends have posted over the last day. The stories that appear in the News Feed are known as "Highlights" and are generally the most commented and "liked" stories. Since this year's redesign, Facebook has used the "Highlights" section at the right hand side of the homepage to display items you may have missed. However, you couldn't see posted comments on these posts and the space was so small it was easy to miss! Now, when you select the "News Feed" tab you will see the top stories based on a few factors, including how many of your friends commented and how likely you are to respond to that post. This is all based on your past history interacting with the site.

Users are able to move from feed-to-feed by selecting the appropriate tab at the top of the homepage.

Why the changes? According to Facebook's blog, "while seeing real-time activities is extremely valuable, we also want to be sure you don't miss other interesting content. . .we decided with today's changes to move what you used to see in Highlights from the right-hand side to the News Feed view in the main column so you can more easily engage with both views." Basically, Facebook doesn't want you to miss interesting content.

Though many people seem to like being able to use both feeds, the changes are causing some backlash on Facebook. Many anti-change groups are starting to pop up. It's inevitable- people hate change, and when they see it happen on Facebook, they want it to change back!

The largest growing group against the changes to the feed is the "I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE" group, which has over 17,500 members at press time.

The group's description speaks for itself- people hate change:

"I HATE CHANGE AND EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT

I WANT EVERYTHING TO REMAIN STATIC THROUGHOUT MY ENTIRE LIFE

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I WANT FROM THINGS I CANNOT CONTROL

BY LOGICAL DEDUCTION I AUTOMATICALLY OPPOSE THE NEW FACEBOOK STREAMING HOME PAGE

IF I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS GROUP IT IS NO LONGER FUNNY."

TechCrunch reports that "Facebook employees like Ivan Kirigin and Ari Steinberg have already joined it. . .so has Mark Zuckerberg ." Though the group is meant to be taken as a joke, many people are writing on the group's wall about how much they hate the new Facebook.

What do you think of the new Facebook News Feed and Live Feed?

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