Facebook pushes out restructured news feeds
A look at the newly tweaked Facebook homepage.
(Credit: Facebook)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."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
The new live feed simply clutters status updates with a bunch or junk and makes it even harder to keep up with friends. News feed would be a viable alternative if we could program it ourselves. But their formula does not capture the "highlights" I really want to see.
If an actual user friendly alternative arises I'd be happy to join it.
Thanks.
I've already joined two groups hating against the new facebook, one which has had more than 64000 members since this morning. Hopefully facebook will see this and change it back otherwise I will be less than impressed!
I really hate the "this_guy is now friends with that_guy".that now shows up in the feed. I was glad it went away last time they changed the UI. No one cares about that. And why is that under Live Feed anyway. Just clogs up the page.
And the News Feed is not chronologically arranged, plus how the heck does it know 'top stories'? My feed's top stories seems to uninteresting.
Fail.
Just unDO it! We all hate it passionately if you haven't noticed. What's next, my private messages to my family or friends will be publically displayed?
- by Weax October 27, 2009 9:12 PM PDT
- You can hide the new annoying messages from the feeds. And If you switch to the Live Feed, You just get almost the same old good facebook homepage:
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