Once again, Facebook has changed what users see as the default on their “home” page – what used to be status updates and such is now replaced by what Facebook calls the news feed.
But don’t panic – If you don’t like the news feed, you have a few options.
If you click on “View Live Feed” at the top of the screen next to the words News Feed -
you’ll now see a mix of udpates that is much like generations ago FB – status updates, who has made new “friends”, who has joined a group, who has posted pictures, etc.
After you click it, the Live Feed becomes your default view, and you can click on “View News Feed” to return to just the news feed.
If you’d prefer to just see status updates, you can do that, too.
To start, click on “more” underneath the list on the left of your home screen as in the list below (note: the order of items on your list might be different. The concept won’t be):
You’ll now see an expanded view of options. From here, click on “Status Updates” and simply drag it to the top of the list. After you let go, click it again – this will bring up the status updates for you to peruse.
Status Updates will now be your default view. To change back, click on “More” again and drag News Feed to the top of the list then click it.
Edited to add that y’all should look in the comments below to learn how to make sure your feed shows ALL your friends (though if you have fewer than 250, you’re seeing them all regardless. Still, you should probably check the exchange below if you plan to add more friends.)
That’s the quick tutorial on how to do a few basic changes to your feed. I suspect there are more options I haven’t yet discovered, but these are the ones that most interest me. What about you? Found anything curious or cool in the new changes?
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Those people who might want to keep the Live Feed should know that the default is not to show all your friends. You need to go to the bottom of the page and choose EDIT OPTIONS and then change the number of friends it will show. I chose 5000, even though I don’t have that many friends, it’s the max allowed by Facebook and therefore should pick up new friends as I add them.
Good advice, Susan… yet it can be even more complicated! Facebook does have a 250 friend default. If you have “Edit Options” at the bottom of your screen, you can click on it and up the number (I also chose 5,000). However…
Many people DON’T have the “Edit Options” button available to click. I was among them. To make it appear, while in my Live News Feed, I hovered my mouse over a friend’s status update until I could select “Hide” as an option. After I hid my friend, “Edit Options” appeared at the bottom of the screen. I clicked on that and un-hid my friend AND changed the default number of friends visible in the feed.
When you first hide someone, you also get an “edit options” choice right by the update you hid. However, clicking on that only lets you control who is in your feed and does NOT let you change the default number of people visible.
This is all so easy and self explanatory, isn’t it?
Oh boy, I’m glad you figured out how to do it for those that don’t have the Edit Options showing. I’ll add this to my bag of tricks too.
Yes, so easy and self explanatory – not!
I didn’t have the Edit Options at the bottom of my page and was wracking my brain all day yesterday! Greg, you’re the best!
Thanks,
Lori
Thanks so much, Greg! Didn’t have Edit Options at the bottom of my page either. Phew!
Greg, what a timely blog. I was trying to figure out yesterday why everything had gone whacky on Facebook. Thanks for the info.
So this is going to mark me as a very inexperienced FaceBooker but what is the difference between a News Feed and a Status Update? I can’t tell. maybe that’s why I haven’t been bothered by the change…
No, Holly, that’s not inexperience – just something most of us never think about!
Status updates are simply all the things we enter in the box that says “what’s on your mind?”
The Live Feed contains all those updates plus things like “Greg became a fan of Elbows” and “George and Martha are now friends” and who was tagged in photos and and and. You can control what’s in that feed via your Settings tab at the top – for example, you can make it so you don’t see quiz results.
In both cases, you can make it so that you don’t see certain people’s updates, too, by hiding them for real, not just as I used them in my example above!
Greg: Any idea how FB goes about picking the 250 that becomes your default news feed?
Steve – I don’t know for sure, no. I suspect it’s an algorithm that ranks them based on a slew of factors – maybe things like how often you’ve replied to them or commented on their status, how long you’ve been friends, number of mutual connections, etc. And it might even be a rotating list of 250. It’s cloaked in mystery – perhaps not intentionally, but I simply can’t find the answer!
Thanks Greg I have the Edit Options thingie but it doesn’t give me an option to change my default 250. Ideas so I can increase it?
Thanks, Greg–I was going nuts looking for things that I couldn’t find! How do you KNOW all this stuff?!
Vicki – myguess is that you’ve gotten to Edit Option in the News Feed and not in the Live News Feed. You need to do it from the Live Feed in order to be able to change the default number.
For what it’s worth, I wrote more about that quirk in another post:
http://www.thehappyaccident.net/quick-tutorial-facebooks-home-page-feed-options/
If that isn’t the solution… uh… well… uh… I don’t know. I still can get mine to appear, and it always lets me change the number. So if you’re still having problems, shoot me an email and let’s see if we can track it down.
This Firefox add-on can make the LIVE news feed less cluttered with all that worthless posting that many are complaining they dont need to see and just wastes their time scrolling through junk.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/47397
Relief for Facebook spam
I’m curious, FacebookUser, why you wouldn’t reveal your name or site here. Since you’ve left the only comment (currently) at the add-on’s page that you link to, I’m wondering if you might not be its developer? I’d also note that one person’s “junk” is another person’s treasure….
The add-on might very well be useful, though I’d note that you can fine tune your Feeds via the Settings button (upper right on the Facebook page) as well. And you can do it without attitude
Not sure if anyone has noticed, but the Edit Options has changed once again. I actually liked the feature that allowed adding people to a “see more of” list. Gone. As is the numerical count of how many people to include in the Live Feed.
Are these guys totally ADD and have to screw with things weekly? Grrr.