Facebook has this week revealed two major changes to the social network’s design in a bid to give its 30 million UK users more “real-time” information.
Now when you log in, you will find a new ticker in the top right of the screen providing “live” details of what your friends are doing.
This can include items such as comments left on other people’s statuses, pictures and video your pals may have added and any new friends they’ve accepted.
Facebook bosses hope these changes will encourage users to respond more quickly to what is happening on the site.
As well as the Ticker, a new-style News Feed has also been introduced. It now ranks updates by what Facebook believes are your ‘Top Stories’, rather than putting them in chronological order.
The more you interact with the automatically chosen Top Stories, telling Facebook which are important and which aren’t, the more the technology will learn what you want at the head of your News Feed.
On Facebook’s blog, its bosses promised: "Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff any more. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away."
These updates are slowly being rolled out over the next few days so if you don’t see it on your account yet, have patience.
And to help you make the most of this latest Facebook redesign, we’ve come up with some handy tips below. We also want to know what you think about it too. Do you like what Facebook has done or should they have just left things as they were? Leave us a comment.
1) You cannot remove the Ticker but you can make it smaller Just click over the double line at the bottom of it until a double arrow appears and then move it up and down.
2) Hovering over an item in the Ticker will bring up a larger window on the left of it showing any comments, photos, video, maps or other images associated with that post.
3) If you’ve not logged in to Facebook for a while, the News Feed will display the best posts from your friends for the period of time you’ve been away. It automatically places posts higher in the list according to a number of factors including the type of update – for example a birth, marriage or engagement – or those with lots of comments and Likes.
[Related story: Facebook to unveil changes at conference]
4) A small blue triangle in the top left of a News Feed post signifies it as a Top Story. Clicking it unmarks its Top Story status and tells Facebook not to put others posts like that one at the head of your feed. The more you do this, the more Facebook learns what type of updates you consider most important. You can also choose to make something a Top Story by hovering over the top left and clicking the blanked-out triangle to make it appear fully.
5) Hovering over the top right hand side of a News Feed post brings up a downward pointing arrow. Select this to display a menu of options. This allows you to choose what updates you wish to see from any particular friend or page you’re subscribed to and allows you to remove their posts totally from your News Feed.
6) Facebook now displays photos and videos much larger in your News Feed. Clicking one creates a bigger pop-up of the image. This can then be tagged, commented on or Liked. To close it, just click outside of the pop-up box.
7) If you don’t want details of how you are using Apps to show up in the Ticker, go to Application Settings and click Only Me under the Customise menu. This means no one else will receive updates on your app use but you will need to do this for each app you interact with.
8) Top News and Most Recent are now combined as two separate elements in one News Feed. You simply scroll down to see the recent ones rather than clicking a button to make these appear in their own feed.
9) If you’ve hidden posts, friends or other updates from your News Feed, you can call them back again by editing it. Click the pencil icon next to the words ‘News Feed’ in your left hand menu and then select Edit.
10) To customise your News Feed even more, you can use the Lists option. It is on the left hand menu. Add people to different Lists that already exist such as Close Friends or Family or create your own ones by selecting “More”. Then by clicking the List name, you’ll generate updates in your News Feed only from the people in that list.
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