Here We Go Again: Millions Protest New Facebook Homepage

It was only a matter of time. A minority of Facebook users simply hate change and this time around it’s no exception. Over 1 million people have joined the Facebook group “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!” While a joke group “I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE” now has over 19,000 members, it’s clear that the jokesters are among an even smaller minority. I guess that’s how it always goes!

The majority of users that have joined the new Facebook group don’t really have much of a basis for the change except that they don’t like the new feed. It’s difficult to argue that Facebook should switch it back though as the Live Feed still enables users to see all of their friends. Apparently it isn’t that simple for some users though. The following note has been spreading around the site:

FB is blocking all your friends’ NEWS FEEDS except 250 THEY CHOOSE. TO UNDO BLOCK: Go to your HOME page. Make sure your news feed shows LIVE FEED. Then scroll to the bottom, click “Edit Options”, You will then see your NEWS FEED SETTINGS. Change the 250 to 5000 for Facebook’s friend limit and your feed will work right again. COPY & PASTE THIS & PASS IT ON

This issue is limited to a segment of the site who appear to have separate options. While we don’t have the same options as the users sending this note around, the screenshot below shows what live feed settings are presented to some of the users. Aside from those users who had their live feed limited to 250 friends, most people I’ve talked to don’t mind the new design.

Then again, hundreds of people posted on our Facebook Page that they don’t like the new design, but the majority of those people failed to present any rational argument for why Facebook should switch it back.

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828839 Comments2009-10-26+21%3A00%3A04Nick+O%27Neill »

what about the annoyed and disturbed adds of friends from the others they show IN HOME PAGEEEEEEEEEE
ITS RIDICULUS
WHAT ABOUT PRIVATE TAGS ON PHOTOS OR VIDEOS
THIS THINGS ARE VISIBLE TO EVERYONE IN THE PLANET EARTH IN HOME PAGE TOO…
I DEMAND MY PRIVACY

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
Users should be able to hide stories about “X is now a friend of Y” or “X joined group Y” etc, just like they can hide stories from applications.

Also, FB should have made the Live Feed the default, not the filtered and mostly useless “News Feed”.

If these two changes are made, I don’t see why anyone would still complain.

Comment by Matt Kruse — October 26, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
I have written several times in several places, including on this blog, why I do not like the changes. I DO NOT CARE WHO BECOMES FRIENDS WITH WHOM, AND I DO NOT WANT ALL THAT CLUTTERING UP MY PAGE. I DO NOT LIKE THE FACT THAT THE AUTOMATIC UPDATE FEATURE ON THE FEED IS NOW GONE. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW EVERY GROUP SOMEONE JOINS AND WHEN THEY JOIN IT. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE A POST EVERY TIME SOMEONE JOINS A GROUP OR BECOMES A FAN OF WHATEVER. YOU WANTED SPECIFIC REASONS? THERE ARE A FEW. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT READING COMMENTS VERY WELL, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT FOUND ONE PERSON ON MY FRIENDS LIST WHO LIKES THE NEW DESIGN. INSTEAD OF MAKING FUN OF US BECAUSE WE DON’T LIKE THE NEW PAGE, WHY DON’T YOU ACTUALLY LISTEN TO US? I DON’T APPRECIATE NOT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY, SINCE I AM PART OF FACEBOOK’s BREAD AND BUTTER. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT.

Comment by Kara — October 26, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
Errica, look at your privacy settings.

As for all the clutter, just click “View News Feed” and never ever open the Live Feed again.

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
If you don’t want it to be visible, just change your privacy settings so that no feeds are generated when you add new content. This design actually changes nothing, why are people complaining?!

Comment by Francis Pelland — October 26, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Matt: If you are on Live Feed, it stays on live feed.

Comment by Francis Pelland — October 26, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
Sorry but the information in your article is inaccurate. I have already tested the new configuration, and it does NOT in fact let you see all your friends. Even if you go into your “Recommended Friends” menu and manually activate every single friend, just a couple of minutes later, many of them will be removed again, due to FB’s flawed recommended friend algorithm. It doesn’t matter if you set the “Maximum Number of Friends show in Live Feed” to 100 or 1000 or 5000. FB still makes changes without your consent, and those changes are wrong. As an example, one of most important friends, has been re-removed from my “live feed” over 10 times by FB’s algorithm, even though I’ve gone in and manually changed it that many times to fix it. I’m not resistant to change, I just despise incompetence and inefficiency, especially when my power of choice is hindered or in this case removed completely. It needs to go back to the way it was, or it needs to be fixed with a configuration selection that says “show me 100% of my content at all times” (and they need to stick to it)…

Comment by JD — October 26, 2009 @ 5:32 pm
on the whole I don’t have any major problems – I have switched to Live Feed as News feed does not seem to be being regularly updated and old posts bob back to the top if someone has commented on them, which I find annoying. I don’t like the “bob is friends with bill” as it is surplus to requirements with the “friends suggestion” box – and I wish I had the option to get rid of that without “hiding “everything from that friend.

Also I was very disappointed that the highlights box on the right hand side has disappeared as this was very useful for seeing photos and note I might have missed in the “news/Live feed” I used that a lot.

Currently the “notifications” box in the right hand corner seems erratic on what it chooses to notify me of – hopefully that will settle.

Comment by Karon Hollis — October 26, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
Give us options to not have what pages we fan and what groups we join plastered all over our friends walls without our permission!!!!
And give us the option to remove same from clogging up our news feed!
Its not about design!!!! Its about privacy and options…. facebook has taken away both!!!

Comment by Larna Pittiglio — October 26, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
While the hysteria every time does get a little tiresome, I don’t know how Facebook can think it’s a good idea to make radical changes to the layout and design practically every few months. Frankly, it looks indecisive and amateurish to switch things around so often.

As for the new design, it annoys me, yeah, because it’s another change to get used to. Change isn’t always a bad thing, but nor is it always a good thing. As someone else said, the news feed is useless (the items appear to be almost a day out of date), and at least for me it switches back to the news feed as default every time I restart my browser.

Comment by Dave Rattigan — October 26, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
What? There are people complaining about the Feed not being busy ENOUGH? My complaiing friends (and some of the commenters here, apparently) are complaining that the new feed is TOO busy. (The old-style “is friends with” posts seem to be a target of excessive ire. Weird. That used to be a popular way of finding out when friends joined Facebook!)

So, anyway, the protest groups are filling with protestors who have opposing complaints! That’s why nobody should take Facebook protest groups seriously. Half the people who join them haven’t even read the groups’ descriptions.

(Me? I’m OK with the new feed. It re-added most of the stuff I complained about losing the last time Facebook changed things.)

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
i have already arrange MY private settings but not ALL the others… so they disturb me to see in HOME PAGE who adds to whom, which page become fan, who they are strange faces who aren’t my friend tagged on photos or videos
TAGS ARE PRIVATE ISSUE AND SHOWS ONLY IN THE PAGE OF FRIENDS THEY ARE TAGGED ON ….. NOT IN HOME PAGE…..
in addition i cant find where is LIVE FEED
IT TELLS …. LAST NEWS…. NOT LIVE FEEDS

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Well, I for one dislike that the new publisher is not working properly on the homepage, while it does work on the profile. I don’t like that it still doesn’t include the privacy options discussed in July. The Design of the two news and live feed tabs is simply not polished. Apart from that, since the feed is becoming more complex and people hate it when coders add complexity to their life that they can live without, they should *at LEAST* offer an explanation of all those options instead of just introducing them without further notice.

In general, I like the two feeds. But I want my per item privacy options!

Comment by Tobias Schwarz — October 26, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
I USE FACEBOOK IN GREEK THERE IS NO BUTTON “LIVE FEEDS”
?UT “LAST NEWS” ?????NG IS SCROLLING TO BE ABLE TO MAKE CHANGES I WANT TO DO…
MY FRIENDS DON’T KNOW WHERE ARE THIS INDICATIONS IN HOMEPAGE
NOBODY CAN SEE THEM

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 6:20 pm
Francis said: “If you don’t want it to be visible, just change your privacy settings so that no feeds are generated when you add new content.”

I have already changed my settings. But most have not. I still receive their garbage posts, and I have no say over that, unless I just “unfriend” a person or “hide” them, which, if I actually care about someone, I don’t want to do. And I am not saying it’s a users fault for not changing his or her settings. No one should have to bend over backwards to hide crap that they don’t want to see. The crap just shouldn’t be there in the first place. Example: Person X has just become friends with Person Y and 15 others.” Perzon A has just become a fan of B.” It shouldn’t be up to us to go wading into our settings. The simplest and most common sense thing to do is for FB to just reverse the policy that spams our pages with unnecessary, cluttering, annoying content.

Comment by Kara — October 26, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
don’t take side dude … we’re unhappy … and as a ranked blogger I am reading daily you should inform people and avoid conversations like “my friends don’t mind the design” and “majority of people” … this is serious number

Comment by Rudi Opalchenov — October 26, 2009 @ 7:11 pm
These changes are horrid. Moving the status updates to the top, choosing live feed or news feed; none of these work the way the site used to work. I had taken time and effort to get my “home” page on FB where I wanted it. Without warning (and that is the bad part – a little heads up would have done wonders) all my customizations are gone. I think I’m mostly off to Twitter now. Facebook will soon find itself being the AOL of social networking, the nice place with walls where everyone started, until they realize that there’s a bigger place “out there”.

Comment by Forrest Sweasy — October 26, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
Seems like they took off the group email option, too. AAARGH!

That’s the point of having a group – so you can contact them all at once. DUH, Facebook!

Comment by Cindy Morus — October 26, 2009 @ 8:23 pm
Want your old facebook back?
On your homepage look at the list on the top left side – underneath there is More in very tiny font. Click on the more and a full menu will appear.
Near the top of the list you will see Status Updates. Click on it and drag it to the top of the list to make it your default. It works!!

Comment by J Greener — October 26, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
I think the Live Feed is great, but I find the News Feed to be ridiculous…a seemingly random mix of old and new things. And on the mobile site (touch.facebook.com), the News Feed is all you get, rendering it virtually useless, and therefore something I am less likely to use. Not, I suspect, what they should be aiming for in an upgrade.

Comment by Matthew — October 26, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
I wish I could sign in to see the new layout, but my account has been “down for maintenance” for 4 days now. Woohoo!

Comment by Amy — October 26, 2009 @ 9:54 pm
i like the “highlights” Section but whatever.

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 10:02 pm
We’re unhappy! Protest New Facebook Design! It’s really wierd! We’re going to use Wovre!

Comment by John Harvy — October 26, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
Where to start…

If you are on Facebook all day, you’re right, News Feed is worthless and has outdated info. You shouldn’t use it, it isn’t for you. But if you AREN’T on Facebook all day, you probably don’t want to read through all of the details of everything you missed. So News Feed is actually very useful. It provides stuff (I think from the past 24 hours) that has been commented and given “thumbs up” the most, so most recent is not most important here. I find it useful. Actually understand that this is essentially the “Highlights” section that is no longer on the right.

If all you care about is Status Updates (and not who has befriended whom), simply click More and drag Status Updates to the top. This makes Status Updates the default view.

Am I the only one who realizes that Live Feed is actually live again? This is a major improvement. After the last change, we had to refresh.

The lady above likes to use a lot of caps, worrying about her privacy. Check your photos privacy. You can control what goes into your feed. And it’s not like broadcasting who you are befriending or becoming a fan of affects privacy. That stuff was always public knowledge.

People don’t like knowing who befriended whom? Really? I love it. I prefer it to having to “X” out all of the people I don’t know. Oh, “such and such” person became friends with someone I know? Didn’t know they were on Facebook! Add as Friend. I was happy they brought it back.

Lots of complaints, but these were actually pretty minor changes. And to be honest, it makes it a lot more like it was before the LAST change when everyone complained.

Also getting tiresome when people talk about “their Facebook” and get all upset when changes are made, like they have legal rights to this stuff. It’s not YOUR Facebook. Facebook can do whatever the heck they want with it. If you don’t like it, leave. Find an alternative. But creating and joining Facebook groups in “protest” seems a bit silly to me. It’s like joining the army in protest of war.

You hate it so much, leave. Or don’t. Either way, it’s somewhat humorous watching the freakouts every time a change is made. Annoying, but funny.

Comment by Jon — October 26, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
the new feed makes sense for someone who has thousands of friends but since i only have 144 friends i want to see what everyone is doing, for me it’s about quality and quality means staying in touch with every little detail of someone else’s life

Comment by adelaide djs — October 27, 2009 @ 2:21 am
MR. JON IN MY HOME-DOMAIN PAGE THERE ARE NOT ANY INDICATIONS YOU’VE DESCRIBED
WHAT CAN I DO TO FIX IT? ITS NOT MY PROBLEM BUT F/B TEAMS PROBLEM
ALSO I DON’T WANT EVERYBODY BE ABLE TO SEE WHO TAG ME ON A PHOTO OR IN A VIDEO ITS PRIVATE FOR MOTHERHOOD
IN ADDITION… I CANT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THOSE CHANGES TO EXPOSE OUR PRIVACY IN PUBLIC

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 27, 2009 @ 6:14 am
hello, just wondering if its possible to put back the survey of photos and stuff, that was before on the right side…with this- when somebody put some photos- it stays there for a bit longer..without it and with this new version it actually disappears very soon and just a few people can see it….

Comment by vero — October 27, 2009 @ 11:07 am
Lol, you’re all such losers. Get lives.

Comment by Anon — October 27, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
what if I don’t care about all that info, that new FB gives to me, what if all I want is to see my friends statuses and not what tey’re doing
it’s just disturbing

Comment by piccolina — October 27, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
Every time I go on, my suggestions keeps telling me to send a message to my friend who DIED months ago. Yet they won’t let me tell them because I don’t have her personal account information. Thank you, facebook, for allowing me to visit her death over and over and over…

Comment by myohmy — October 27, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
do u think they’ve changed it to lessen cpu power? because of many users, i think they have done it for their machine to work well while handling a boosting number of new users?

Comment by eds — October 27, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
piccolina: "what if I don’t care about all that info, that new FB gives to me, what if all I want is to see my friends statuses and not what tey’re doing

it’s just disturbing"

Then just click 'more' on the feed filters on the left, and drag the 'Status Updates' filter up to the top of the list. I can't see why people are complaining about having more choice in how you see stuff – for me personally, I'm happy they're brought back a lot of the stuff they removed in the last re-design.

Comment by Gareth Harrison — October 27, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
"This issue is limited to a segment of the site who appear to have separate options. While we don’t have the same options as the users sending this note around…"

This in itself should tell you that there was a big problem with this "upgrade". Why on earth would some users have some options and others wouldn't?

A lot of people are noticing that many of their friends are missing from the Live Feed view and Facebook hasn't provided any info on how to fix that. On top of that, once you find out how to do it, it takes a convoluted mix of steps to do so. (I posted them here if anyone needs them:
http://www.techforluddites.com/2009/10/bug-alert-...

Also, despite your previous post, my Live Feed isn't live. So it's not just a matter of not liking some of the new features, but it's not even working the way it's supposed to. Forced change + buggy implementation = unhappy users.

Like with all Facebook changes, of course people will get used to it. But that doesn't mean they had no right to be annoyed in the first place.

Comment by Elizabeth Kricfalusi — October 29, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
I keep saying this over and over, I have to look through all the links to see everything. When in the old style it all came on one page. That was simplicity. No matter what I do, Netflix, Xbox, and the other groups I've joined DO NOT show on any feed. It's utterly ridiculous that they are determining what I want to see based on what THEY think I look at or reply too. On the old page, if there was something I didn't watch, like Farmville, I would remove it. I don't need some moronic big brother determing my viewing habits.

Comment by Tim — October 29, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
Everyone keeps saying that if you don't want to see the "so-and-so became a friend of so-and-so" notifications, just go to your privacy settings and turn that off. Trouble is, THIS DOESN'T WORK. The privacy settings only affect the News Feed, not the live stream. I haven't found any way to turn off notifications for the live stream.,

As for just moving "Status Updates" to the top of your list and choosing that, it's also no help. I don't want to see ONLY status updates–I also want to see posted links, photos, etc.

Basically, the News Feed is useless for many of us. I don't care what facebook THINKS I want to see. I want to see what my friends posted, without interference from FB. But I also want my privacy settings to be respected by the live stream.

Another half-finished implementation, IMO.

Comment by Savanah Brentnall — October 30, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
whats wrong with the new FB home:

U can’t tell who actually is exposed to your post.

Most users use the default ‘news feed’ which is selective & has so little action, it probably won’t include your post.

The live feed won’t always show your post either:

“Live Feed automatically determines which friends to include based on who Facebook thinks you want to hear from most.”

The news feed-
is dead slow, no real action going on.

The live feed-
doesn’t include all your friends post
include to much info like: “who became friend with who”

Comment by Facebook User — November 2, 2009 @ 12:40 pm
When people join a group or something, fine, we like, we comment but apparently every time someone else joins said group or what have you, it’s added to the same post.

What happens now to our personal like and commenting?

Plus I liked clicking on the “X new posts”. I’m sure everyone’ll agree, it made everything easier to catch up on.

Who actually uses this News Feed thing anyway?

Comment by Summer — November 3, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
I like change, change is good. Every time facebook is updated there are always haters so im not surprised! However regardless of wether they hate or disagree with it; 1. they won't drop outa facebook and 2. it will never be changed back. therefore accept it or deactivate your account!it's that simple

Comment by FeVeR — November 9, 2009 @ 12:39 am
My facebook homepage was changed today & my sons was changed last week, I thought I got lucky. Eariler today before my hamopage was changed, I had a page selection to go back to the old homepage (even thou I was still on the old homepAGE) AND NOW THAT i NEED THAT PAGE SELECTION TO GO BACK TO THE OLD i CANT FIND IT TO CHANGE BACK, CAN YOU SEND THE LINK BACK TO ME PLEASE, THANK YOU 7 SORRY FOR THE CAPS I WaS TOO FAR INTO IT TO RE DO THIS NOTE. THANK YOU

RONDA

Comment by Ronda Moore — February 9, 2010 @ 3:58 pm

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what about the annoyed and disturbed adds of friends from the others they show IN HOME PAGEEEEEEEEEE
ITS RIDICULUS
WHAT ABOUT PRIVATE TAGS ON PHOTOS OR VIDEOS
THIS THINGS ARE VISIBLE TO EVERYONE IN THE PLANET EARTH IN HOME PAGE TOO…
I DEMAND MY PRIVACY

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 5:10 pm

Users should be able to hide stories about “X is now a friend of Y” or “X joined group Y” etc, just like they can hide stories from applications.

Also, FB should have made the Live Feed the default, not the filtered and mostly useless “News Feed”.

If these two changes are made, I don’t see why anyone would still complain.

Comment by Matt Kruse — October 26, 2009 @ 5:16 pm

I have written several times in several places, including on this blog, why I do not like the changes. I DO NOT CARE WHO BECOMES FRIENDS WITH WHOM, AND I DO NOT WANT ALL THAT CLUTTERING UP MY PAGE. I DO NOT LIKE THE FACT THAT THE AUTOMATIC UPDATE FEATURE ON THE FEED IS NOW GONE. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW EVERY GROUP SOMEONE JOINS AND WHEN THEY JOIN IT. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE A POST EVERY TIME SOMEONE JOINS A GROUP OR BECOMES A FAN OF WHATEVER. YOU WANTED SPECIFIC REASONS? THERE ARE A FEW. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT READING COMMENTS VERY WELL, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT FOUND ONE PERSON ON MY FRIENDS LIST WHO LIKES THE NEW DESIGN. INSTEAD OF MAKING FUN OF US BECAUSE WE DON’T LIKE THE NEW PAGE, WHY DON’T YOU ACTUALLY LISTEN TO US? I DON’T APPRECIATE NOT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY, SINCE I AM PART OF FACEBOOK’s BREAD AND BUTTER. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT.

Comment by Kara — October 26, 2009 @ 5:19 pm

Errica, look at your privacy settings.

As for all the clutter, just click “View News Feed” and never ever open the Live Feed again.

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 5:23 pm

If you don’t want it to be visible, just change your privacy settings so that no feeds are generated when you add new content. This design actually changes nothing, why are people complaining?!

Comment by Francis Pelland — October 26, 2009 @ 5:24 pm

Matt: If you are on Live Feed, it stays on live feed.

Comment by Francis Pelland — October 26, 2009 @ 5:25 pm

Sorry but the information in your article is inaccurate. I have already tested the new configuration, and it does NOT in fact let you see all your friends. Even if you go into your “Recommended Friends” menu and manually activate every single friend, just a couple of minutes later, many of them will be removed again, due to FB’s flawed recommended friend algorithm. It doesn’t matter if you set the “Maximum Number of Friends show in Live Feed” to 100 or 1000 or 5000. FB still makes changes without your consent, and those changes are wrong. As an example, one of most important friends, has been re-removed from my “live feed” over 10 times by FB’s algorithm, even though I’ve gone in and manually changed it that many times to fix it. I’m not resistant to change, I just despise incompetence and inefficiency, especially when my power of choice is hindered or in this case removed completely. It needs to go back to the way it was, or it needs to be fixed with a configuration selection that says “show me 100% of my content at all times” (and they need to stick to it)…

Comment by JD — October 26, 2009 @ 5:32 pm

on the whole I don’t have any major problems – I have switched to Live Feed as News feed does not seem to be being regularly updated and old posts bob back to the top if someone has commented on them, which I find annoying. I don’t like the “bob is friends with bill” as it is surplus to requirements with the “friends suggestion” box – and I wish I had the option to get rid of that without “hiding “everything from that friend.

Also I was very disappointed that the highlights box on the right hand side has disappeared as this was very useful for seeing photos and note I might have missed in the “news/Live feed” I used that a lot.

Currently the “notifications” box in the right hand corner seems erratic on what it chooses to notify me of – hopefully that will settle.

Comment by Karon Hollis — October 26, 2009 @ 5:38 pm

Give us options to not have what pages we fan and what groups we join plastered all over our friends walls without our permission!!!!
And give us the option to remove same from clogging up our news feed!
Its not about design!!!! Its about privacy and options…. facebook has taken away both!!!

Comment by Larna Pittiglio — October 26, 2009 @ 5:44 pm

While the hysteria every time does get a little tiresome, I don’t know how Facebook can think it’s a good idea to make radical changes to the layout and design practically every few months. Frankly, it looks indecisive and amateurish to switch things around so often.

As for the new design, it annoys me, yeah, because it’s another change to get used to. Change isn’t always a bad thing, but nor is it always a good thing. As someone else said, the news feed is useless (the items appear to be almost a day out of date), and at least for me it switches back to the news feed as default every time I restart my browser.

Comment by Dave Rattigan — October 26, 2009 @ 5:52 pm

What? There are people complaining about the Feed not being busy ENOUGH? My complaiing friends (and some of the commenters here, apparently) are complaining that the new feed is TOO busy. (The old-style “is friends with” posts seem to be a target of excessive ire. Weird. That used to be a popular way of finding out when friends joined Facebook!)

So, anyway, the protest groups are filling with protestors who have opposing complaints! That’s why nobody should take Facebook protest groups seriously. Half the people who join them haven’t even read the groups’ descriptions.

(Me? I’m OK with the new feed. It re-added most of the stuff I complained about losing the last time Facebook changed things.)

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 5:54 pm

i have already arrange MY private settings but not ALL the others… so they disturb me to see in HOME PAGE who adds to whom, which page become fan, who they are strange faces who aren’t my friend tagged on photos or videos
TAGS ARE PRIVATE ISSUE AND SHOWS ONLY IN THE PAGE OF FRIENDS THEY ARE TAGGED ON ….. NOT IN HOME PAGE…..
in addition i cant find where is LIVE FEED
IT TELLS …. LAST NEWS…. NOT LIVE FEEDS

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 6:04 pm

Well, I for one dislike that the new publisher is not working properly on the homepage, while it does work on the profile. I don’t like that it still doesn’t include the privacy options discussed in July. The Design of the two news and live feed tabs is simply not polished. Apart from that, since the feed is becoming more complex and people hate it when coders add complexity to their life that they can live without, they should *at LEAST* offer an explanation of all those options instead of just introducing them without further notice.

In general, I like the two feeds. But I want my per item privacy options!

Comment by Tobias Schwarz — October 26, 2009 @ 6:10 pm

I USE FACEBOOK IN GREEK THERE IS NO BUTTON “LIVE FEEDS”
?UT “LAST NEWS” ?????NG IS SCROLLING TO BE ABLE TO MAKE CHANGES I WANT TO DO…
MY FRIENDS DON’T KNOW WHERE ARE THIS INDICATIONS IN HOMEPAGE
NOBODY CAN SEE THEM

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 26, 2009 @ 6:20 pm

Francis said: “If you don’t want it to be visible, just change your privacy settings so that no feeds are generated when you add new content.”

I have already changed my settings. But most have not. I still receive their garbage posts, and I have no say over that, unless I just “unfriend” a person or “hide” them, which, if I actually care about someone, I don’t want to do. And I am not saying it’s a users fault for not changing his or her settings. No one should have to bend over backwards to hide crap that they don’t want to see. The crap just shouldn’t be there in the first place. Example: Person X has just become friends with Person Y and 15 others.” Perzon A has just become a fan of B.” It shouldn’t be up to us to go wading into our settings. The simplest and most common sense thing to do is for FB to just reverse the policy that spams our pages with unnecessary, cluttering, annoying content.

Comment by Kara — October 26, 2009 @ 7:04 pm

don’t take side dude … we’re unhappy … and as a ranked blogger I am reading daily you should inform people and avoid conversations like “my friends don’t mind the design” and “majority of people” … this is serious number

Comment by Rudi Opalchenov — October 26, 2009 @ 7:11 pm

These changes are horrid. Moving the status updates to the top, choosing live feed or news feed; none of these work the way the site used to work. I had taken time and effort to get my “home” page on FB where I wanted it. Without warning (and that is the bad part – a little heads up would have done wonders) all my customizations are gone. I think I’m mostly off to Twitter now. Facebook will soon find itself being the AOL of social networking, the nice place with walls where everyone started, until they realize that there’s a bigger place “out there”.

Comment by Forrest Sweasy — October 26, 2009 @ 7:45 pm

Seems like they took off the group email option, too. AAARGH!

That’s the point of having a group – so you can contact them all at once. DUH, Facebook!

Comment by Cindy Morus — October 26, 2009 @ 8:23 pm

Want your old facebook back?
On your homepage look at the list on the top left side – underneath there is More in very tiny font. Click on the more and a full menu will appear.
Near the top of the list you will see Status Updates. Click on it and drag it to the top of the list to make it your default. It works!!

Comment by J Greener — October 26, 2009 @ 9:19 pm

I think the Live Feed is great, but I find the News Feed to be ridiculous…a seemingly random mix of old and new things. And on the mobile site (touch.facebook.com), the News Feed is all you get, rendering it virtually useless, and therefore something I am less likely to use. Not, I suspect, what they should be aiming for in an upgrade.

Comment by Matthew — October 26, 2009 @ 9:38 pm

I wish I could sign in to see the new layout, but my account has been “down for maintenance” for 4 days now. Woohoo!

Comment by Amy — October 26, 2009 @ 9:54 pm

i like the “highlights” Section but whatever.

Comment by Facebook User — October 26, 2009 @ 10:02 pm

We’re unhappy! Protest New Facebook Design! It’s really wierd! We’re going to use Wovre!

Comment by John Harvy — October 26, 2009 @ 10:52 pm

Where to start…

If you are on Facebook all day, you’re right, News Feed is worthless and has outdated info. You shouldn’t use it, it isn’t for you. But if you AREN’T on Facebook all day, you probably don’t want to read through all of the details of everything you missed. So News Feed is actually very useful. It provides stuff (I think from the past 24 hours) that has been commented and given “thumbs up” the most, so most recent is not most important here. I find it useful. Actually understand that this is essentially the “Highlights” section that is no longer on the right.

If all you care about is Status Updates (and not who has befriended whom), simply click More and drag Status Updates to the top. This makes Status Updates the default view.

Am I the only one who realizes that Live Feed is actually live again? This is a major improvement. After the last change, we had to refresh.

The lady above likes to use a lot of caps, worrying about her privacy. Check your photos privacy. You can control what goes into your feed. And it’s not like broadcasting who you are befriending or becoming a fan of affects privacy. That stuff was always public knowledge.

People don’t like knowing who befriended whom? Really? I love it. I prefer it to having to “X” out all of the people I don’t know. Oh, “such and such” person became friends with someone I know? Didn’t know they were on Facebook! Add as Friend. I was happy they brought it back.

Lots of complaints, but these were actually pretty minor changes. And to be honest, it makes it a lot more like it was before the LAST change when everyone complained.

Also getting tiresome when people talk about “their Facebook” and get all upset when changes are made, like they have legal rights to this stuff. It’s not YOUR Facebook. Facebook can do whatever the heck they want with it. If you don’t like it, leave. Find an alternative. But creating and joining Facebook groups in “protest” seems a bit silly to me. It’s like joining the army in protest of war.

You hate it so much, leave. Or don’t. Either way, it’s somewhat humorous watching the freakouts every time a change is made. Annoying, but funny.

Comment by Jon — October 26, 2009 @ 11:27 pm

the new feed makes sense for someone who has thousands of friends but since i only have 144 friends i want to see what everyone is doing, for me it’s about quality and quality means staying in touch with every little detail of someone else’s life

Comment by adelaide djs — October 27, 2009 @ 2:21 am

MR. JON IN MY HOME-DOMAIN PAGE THERE ARE NOT ANY INDICATIONS YOU’VE DESCRIBED
WHAT CAN I DO TO FIX IT? ITS NOT MY PROBLEM BUT F/B TEAMS PROBLEM
ALSO I DON’T WANT EVERYBODY BE ABLE TO SEE WHO TAG ME ON A PHOTO OR IN A VIDEO ITS PRIVATE FOR MOTHERHOOD
IN ADDITION… I CANT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THOSE CHANGES TO EXPOSE OUR PRIVACY IN PUBLIC

Comment by Errica Komninou — October 27, 2009 @ 6:14 am

hello, just wondering if its possible to put back the survey of photos and stuff, that was before on the right side…with this- when somebody put some photos- it stays there for a bit longer..without it and with this new version it actually disappears very soon and just a few people can see it….

Comment by vero — October 27, 2009 @ 11:07 am

Lol, you’re all such losers. Get lives.

Comment by Anon — October 27, 2009 @ 4:02 pm

what if I don’t care about all that info, that new FB gives to me, what if all I want is to see my friends statuses and not what tey’re doing
it’s just disturbing

Comment by piccolina — October 27, 2009 @ 4:17 pm

Every time I go on, my suggestions keeps telling me to send a message to my friend who DIED months ago. Yet they won’t let me tell them because I don’t have her personal account information. Thank you, facebook, for allowing me to visit her death over and over and over…

Comment by myohmy — October 27, 2009 @ 5:20 pm

do u think they’ve changed it to lessen cpu power? because of many users, i think they have done it for their machine to work well while handling a boosting number of new users?

Comment by eds — October 27, 2009 @ 5:24 pm

piccolina: "what if I don’t care about all that info, that new FB gives to me, what if all I want is to see my friends statuses and not what tey’re doing

it’s just disturbing"

Then just click 'more' on the feed filters on the left, and drag the 'Status Updates' filter up to the top of the list. I can't see why people are complaining about having more choice in how you see stuff – for me personally, I'm happy they're brought back a lot of the stuff they removed in the last re-design.

Comment by Gareth Harrison — October 27, 2009 @ 11:54 pm

"This issue is limited to a segment of the site who appear to have separate options. While we don’t have the same options as the users sending this note around…"

This in itself should tell you that there was a big problem with this "upgrade". Why on earth would some users have some options and others wouldn't?

A lot of people are noticing that many of their friends are missing from the Live Feed view and Facebook hasn't provided any info on how to fix that. On top of that, once you find out how to do it, it takes a convoluted mix of steps to do so. (I posted them here if anyone needs them:
http://www.techforluddites.com/2009/10/bug-alert-...

Also, despite your previous post, my Live Feed isn't live. So it's not just a matter of not liking some of the new features, but it's not even working the way it's supposed to. Forced change + buggy implementation = unhappy users.

Like with all Facebook changes, of course people will get used to it. But that doesn't mean they had no right to be annoyed in the first place.

Comment by Elizabeth Kricfalusi — October 29, 2009 @ 3:12 pm

I keep saying this over and over, I have to look through all the links to see everything. When in the old style it all came on one page. That was simplicity. No matter what I do, Netflix, Xbox, and the other groups I've joined DO NOT show on any feed. It's utterly ridiculous that they are determining what I want to see based on what THEY think I look at or reply too. On the old page, if there was something I didn't watch, like Farmville, I would remove it. I don't need some moronic big brother determing my viewing habits.

Comment by Tim — October 29, 2009 @ 7:15 pm

Everyone keeps saying that if you don't want to see the "so-and-so became a friend of so-and-so" notifications, just go to your privacy settings and turn that off. Trouble is, THIS DOESN'T WORK. The privacy settings only affect the News Feed, not the live stream. I haven't found any way to turn off notifications for the live stream.,

As for just moving "Status Updates" to the top of your list and choosing that, it's also no help. I don't want to see ONLY status updates–I also want to see posted links, photos, etc.

Basically, the News Feed is useless for many of us. I don't care what facebook THINKS I want to see. I want to see what my friends posted, without interference from FB. But I also want my privacy settings to be respected by the live stream.

Another half-finished implementation, IMO.

Comment by Savanah Brentnall — October 30, 2009 @ 12:59 pm

whats wrong with the new FB home:

U can’t tell who actually is exposed to your post.

Most users use the default ‘news feed’ which is selective & has so little action, it probably won’t include your post.

The live feed won’t always show your post either:

“Live Feed automatically determines which friends to include based on who Facebook thinks you want to hear from most.”

The news feed-
is dead slow, no real action going on.

The live feed-
doesn’t include all your friends post
include to much info like: “who became friend with who”

Comment by Facebook User — November 2, 2009 @ 12:40 pm

When people join a group or something, fine, we like, we comment but apparently every time someone else joins said group or what have you, it’s added to the same post.

What happens now to our personal like and commenting?

Plus I liked clicking on the “X new posts”. I’m sure everyone’ll agree, it made everything easier to catch up on.

Who actually uses this News Feed thing anyway?

Comment by Summer — November 3, 2009 @ 6:34 pm

I like change, change is good. Every time facebook is updated there are always haters so im not surprised! However regardless of wether they hate or disagree with it; 1. they won't drop outa facebook and 2. it will never be changed back. therefore accept it or deactivate your account!it's that simple

Comment by FeVeR — November 9, 2009 @ 12:39 am

My facebook homepage was changed today & my sons was changed last week, I thought I got lucky. Eariler today before my hamopage was changed, I had a page selection to go back to the old homepage (even thou I was still on the old homepAGE) AND NOW THAT i NEED THAT PAGE SELECTION TO GO BACK TO THE OLD i CANT FIND IT TO CHANGE BACK, CAN YOU SEND THE LINK BACK TO ME PLEASE, THANK YOU 7 SORRY FOR THE CAPS I WaS TOO FAR INTO IT TO RE DO THIS NOTE. THANK YOU

RONDA

Comment by Ronda Moore — February 9, 2010 @ 3:58 pm

Here We Go Again: Millions Protest New Facebook Homepage

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