You may have logged into Facebook recently, scanned your home page, and thought, "I saw all these yesterday... Where are the more recent posts?" Or, you may have asked yourself, "What's all this new crap showing up on here that I don't care about?"

Yes. Facebook has changed their News Feed yet again (after all, it's been 6 whole months since the last time they pi$$ed everyone off!). To get their version of why they did it, you can read this note on the Facebook page or this FAQ page in their Help section.

Here's my favourite part of the explanation—you'll see why as I go through the various changes:

Highlights and the News Feed were combined into a single stream so that you could have more control over what you view on your home page and stay connected with your friends.

News Feed

Remember that Highlights section they added in the last redesign in the right-hand column? It was a bunch of random items that you never had any idea how they chose them so you pretty much ignored them most of the time? They decided to make that your default view. (It's also what you see when you click the News Feed filter in the left-hand column.)

The new News Feed is basically a subset of what your friends have posted in the last day. As with the previous Highlights section, their criteria for selecting what goes there is a mystery, although here is their vague description of how it works:

The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).

Well, that certainly clears things up. As far as I can tell, you have no way of indicating what type of content you actually do find more interesting, which is why that quote above about giving us more control is so ridiculous. Ummm... "no" control is more than what, exactly?

If you actually want to see what people are posting as they're posting it, you can click the "View Live Feed" at the top of the page. According to the Help page, this view will stay as long as you remain logged into Facebook (even if the browser closes). I've had it switch back a couple of times but I can't pinpoint a common action that caused it.

Live Feed

The Live Feed is pretty much what the previous home page was—a list of everyone's posts as they wrote them. There is one major difference, however. It also includes items that used to only show up in the Recent Activity section of your Wall, things like who have become friends, who has joined a Group or a fan Page, etc.

I'm actually finding the reaction to the latter very interesting. This info used to appear in people's News Feeds prior to the last redesign and a lot of people were VERY upset that it went away, including me. I even wrote a blog post about it: Memo to Facebook: Put Friending Info Back on the Home Page. With this latest update, though, I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of, "Why are you cluttering up my home page with all this information about who's becoming friends with whom, which I couldn't care less about!"

This reaction tells me two things:

• People don't like change. Even if it's a good change. Now, if Facebook had added this info back within a few days of the outcry, then users would have been happy because it would have been fresh in their minds. But after six months, you get used to what you have and that becomes the new "good." It's the same theory behind why we still use QWERTY keyboards when it's been proven that it's not a very efficient way to organize the keys. But we know it.
• People are different. What one person loves, another person's going to hate. And when you have 300 million+ users, that really complicates things. But there are lots of ways this could be addressed to make everyone happy. For example, why couldn't they add the same Hide buttons to those kinds of posts that they do to every other kind so those who want to see them will and those who don't, won't.

Of course, I was already aware of the above points. It would be nice if someone could inform the brain trust over at Facebook about them...

Another thing that's different about this Live Feed is what happens when you click the Edit Options link at the bottom of the page. You used to get the window that lets you unhide people you've already hidden from the feed. Now, you get a window that also lets you say who you want to see more of.

This actually confuses me somewhat, since Live Feed should be showing you everything from everyone unless you've hidden them. Having a "Show More" option assumes you're showing less of others. That would make sense to me for the News Feed view because they're picking and choosing from among all the stories but, not surprisingly, you don't get that option on the News Feed page.

Likewise, I don't really get the concept of having a "maximum" number of friends showing up on your home page. But I guess as long as you set the number higher than the number of friends you have, it won't really make a difference.

Update 10/28/09: Since the launch of the new feeds, a lot of people have discovered that some of their friends are missing from the Live Feed. One of the reasons is that they have more than 250 friends. But then the other problem is that some people aren't getting the Edit Options link at the bottom of their feed. I've posted possible fixes in a new post: Bug Alert: Friends Are Missing from the New Facebook Live Feed.

Suggestions Box

There's one other change in the design worth noting. Now that they've eliminated the Highlights section from the right-hand column, that freed up some space. So while there used to be just one Suggestion on the page, now there are two. But the bigger difference is the kind of suggestions they're making. They used to mainly be suggestions of people to add as friends or Pages to become a fan of. There's a much wider gamut of ideas now.

For example, the other day I was told I should reconnect with a friend by writing on her Wall. I found that a little odd, but okay, I could choose to ignore it if I wanted (although I actually DID end up writing on her Wall). But now they're also telling you to tell your friends to do something, like add a profile picture or fill in more profile information. Personally, I find that a little intrusive, but I'd be interested in hearing other people's takes on it.

So, that's what the fine folks at Facebook have been spending their time doing lately. Love it? Hate it? Let me know!

In the meantime, here's an interesting interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, on how he and his colleagues respond to user feedback.

Posted in Facebook, How To, My Two Cents, Social Media, User Interface