I have to admit, I'm feeling a little bit foolish about this one. When I wrote about the differences between the News Feed and Live Feed views on Facebook, I didn't even think to address why they call it "Live" Feed.
Normally, if I saw "live feed," I would assume it means that the feed is actually, well, live. By that I mean that if you were looking at the page, new posts would automatically be added as they came in, pushing previous ones down the page, without you having to manually refresh the page. If you use TweetDeck to manage your Twitter account, that's an example of what I'm talking about. Facebook actually had a Live Feed option a couple of iterations ago and I have no idea why they got rid of it with the last update—I think I liked it, but who can remember...? (The screenshot below proves it wasn't just in my imagination... :)
However, when my Live Feed didn't behave that way, I never assumed it wasn't working properly—I assumed it was just another example of Facebook being bad at naming things! (Like the Edit Options link at the bottom of the news feed that doesn't give any indication of what it's for—unhiding friends—and doesn't have any actual options you can edit).
So imagine my surprise when I found this entry yesterday on the All Facebook blog:
No You Aren’t Hallucinating, The Facebook Live Feed Is Real-Time
Apparently some people are actually receiving a live feed, although there's no indication of what magic combination of operating system, browser, version, and dumb luck you might need to have to make it work. The comments on that post indicate that it's not working for a lot of those people either and I posed a question to my Facebook friends and, so far, I haven't found anyone for whom it does work. (Correction: A friend has just informed me she is getting a Live Feed, but it keeps switching between News Feed and Live Feed views at random. Not exactly better...)
The reason I'm bringing this up is it seems like this was one of the intents of this latest change, which means it could still suddenly manifest itself and provide you with yet another surprise. If it does happen, just be aware that it's not a new feature—it's a bug fix. (Now, whether or not you'll like it is another matter entirely...)
How about you? Are you getting a live feed or still having to refresh the page yourself to see now posts? Add your comments below!
Posted in Bug Alert, Facebook, Social Media, Updates
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I’m using Firefox 3.5.4 on a Macbook running Snow Leopard, and my Live Feed does actually update in real time. Sometimes. It is this morning, at least.
Using Firefox 3.5.3 on Windows XP, it doesn’t refresh automatically. I will update to 3.5.4 and see what happens.
Nope, doesn’t refresh in 3.5.4. either….
Thanks Alyson and Christine for sharing your experiences. (Christine, I hope the upgrade pays off in other ways for you!)
Mine’s not working either. I’m using Firefox 3.5.4, but I’ve tried it on a different computer using IE and it didn’t work there either. Both Windows XP.
I was actually relieved to find this article, because I’ve been searching and nothing seemed to be coming up with this exact problem, until now. Let me know what happens if anything…
I’m using Firefox 3.5.6, on Windows 7. I’ve never seen it update live yet, even though friends tell me their one updates.
I’m using Firefox 3.5.7 and also have the brand new IE which was downloaded & updated on 1-10-10 and neither of them work properly while viewing facebook. Almost every time I click on the Facebook “Home” link it will be switched around all by itself. What I mean is that about half of the time when I click on Live Feed, it’s mostly links of videos and the like that have been posted, so then I’ll click on News Feed and it’ll be mostly my friends regular posts, the other half of the time it’s exactly opposite of that. It makes no sense what so ever and it affects my posts and others. I usually post directly from my wall, but it will sometimes throw my posts into the News Feed section (even when it’s not news) and it won’t even appear on the live feed page where I want it to go in the first place. So I started clicking on Home first and then posting, but it don’t matter, it’ like Facebook has moods, sometimes it’s in the News Feed mood and others it’s in The Live Feed mood. So now I have to click on Live Feed and scroll down the page a little to see what “mood” it’s in and then also check the News Feed page the same way so that I can determine what the hell is going on. Sometimes I’m forced to post on the Live Feed page and then again (the same post) on the News Feed page, that way I know for certain that ALL my friends see it no matter what “mood” their facebook page is in. It’s all so very confusing and facebook really need to do something about this. I’m going to research this further and try and see just exactly what in the world is going on here.