Today, the uproar over the changes that happened to Facebook feeds and lists has been the majority of updates coming through my feed. But there’s no reason we can’t figure these new Facebook changes out, and see the positive in them!
Changes to Feed
The Facebook feed has changed to now show you everyone and everything in one stream. Items that Facebook deems are important to you, have a blue triangle in the top left corner which labels them a “Top Story.” To change this, click on the triangle to fade it and it becomes unmarked as a top story. You can also do this by clicking the arrow on the right side of a post.
“Recent Stories” and “Top Stories” are randomly displayed in your feed. Over the course of the day as I have tinkered with what I consider to be a top story and not, my feed has slowly come to look a little more normal to me.
Facebook within Facebook
Now we can also see every single time a friend likes a random post, photo or comments on some random person’s wall with that little scrolling box on the top right. Not a lot of people are happy about this, but I for one like being able to take a quick look and see what is going on. Granted, I don’t need to see when G-ma likes the photo of the neighbor’s new kitties, but I guess I can live with it. Just ignore that box, if it bothers you that much.
How to Create Lists
The best part about the new changes by far, are the new list features. Ever since Google+ came out with circles, Facebook has been sorely lacking in how we can sort our pages and friends. Now you can group pages and friends into certain categories.
- On your home screen, click on lists on the left side of the screen.
- Click on “Create a List.”
- Choose the name you want, but keep it nice because people will be notified when they are put on a list.
- Now you can add friends, pages or subscriptions to your list. Just select where you want to add from in that drop down menu on the top left.
- Once you have finished a list, you can go to your lists menu and favorite certain lists so that they show up under your “Favorites”.
- Click on your new list under “Favorites” or “Lists,” and you will see only updates from pages and people you added there.
My only issue with these new list features, is that there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to add a new page I like to a list. I have to go to the list, click on “see all” next to “on the list”, and then use the drop down menu on the left to search for the page I want to add. Friends can be added or removed from lists on their profiles, so hopefully Facebook will quickly roll this out for pages as well.
Notifications
If you have placed a person on a “Close Friends” or “Family” list, then you will now receive notifications at the top of your Facebook for every time he or she posts something new. You may or may not like this, so just be aware of this before adding people to your close friends and family lists.
Grouping
I think many of you will be excited to see that Grouping seems to have vanished. No longer are 123 different page updates being grouped together as one in my feed stream. Whether this is a permanent change or not, only time will tell.
What do you think of the new Facebook changes that came out today? Did you notice a change that I didn’t mention in this post?
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Thanks for this recap, I haven’t had much time to figure out all the changes!
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Crystal Collins Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:41 am
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Crystal Collins Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:45 am
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Like usual, I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to continue doing what we want to on FB, but until then I think I’m going to be ticked off a little
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Crystal Collins Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 1:33 pm
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