Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, when will you ever learn? Oh wait, you did a very long time ago. You make changes, people are outraged and talking about them all over the various media platforms. Smartie pants! We know that Facebook is free and we have a choice to be on there however, they created a platform for people to use. They created the want, need and have us post things that make the italian mob look like saints. All that aside, Facebook is a social media platform that has millions and millions of users that feel comfortable enough to throw it all out there. In return for that ultimate trust, we, as users, expect them to stop relinquishing our control of how we use OUR profile. The thing is, it is not OUR profile. It is their platform that we choosing to have a presence on. We do take ownership of our profiles and when changes are made, we become uncertain and when that certainty is gone, we get outraged.
Facebook Launches Ticker
Facebook has launched the ticker and it has people outraged. What is interesting is that in the time is money driven world we live in, the ticker should have been a welcomed new feature. It updates faster than the news feed and you can interact with people directly from the ticker.
Simple, fast and yet people hate the new Facebook Ticker. Many are concerned that their updates are front and center. That has always been the case and you can control who your updates are shared with and this includes the ticker. The ticker pulls from your updates. If you wish to remove the Facebook Ticker all together and are a bit knowledgeable with Firefox or Chrome, Lifehacker has you covered.
The Ticker is set to play a big role in the new Facebook Timeline. The idea behind Facebook Timeline is to tell important stories of your life all on one page. Facebook wants us to share our life story, download some apps so that we can share and listen to music, watch movies together all from the Ticker. If are friends are listening or watching then we just have to keep up with the Jones’!
Popularity Driven News Feed
The news feed if you do not visit Facebook frequently is now driven by popularity. The “stories” that would be most appealing to you are marked with a blue corner. These are based upon the relationship with the person (ie friend or subscriber) number of comments and likes. These are not necessarily time sensitive as an blue corner update can pop up a day or so later if more people are commenting or liking. The content in the news feed is the same as it was previously as it is articles/links, updates, photo tags, friend requests, events and group memberships. The main difference is when/how the news feed appears.
*If you visit Facebook frequently throughout the day the news feed is exactly the same as the blue corner will only appear and showcase updates from your last visit.
How to Remove Top Stories
Not a fan of what Facebook has determined what you would be interested in? You can simply hide a top story. This can be done 2 ways. Hiding all of a person’s updates or just an individual update.
1. On the story itself, hover over the top right corner arrow and a drop down menu appears.
2. Once the drop down appears, click on the desired option.
As there is not an option to subscribe to business pages, the hide option is different for personal pages and business pages . Above is for a personal page and below is a business page. One would have thought that we would have the option to subscribe to business pages and not personal pages as we are automatically subscribed to friends (which makes the subscribe NOT an opt-in; well except for those that want to be our friend and we ignore them, they can subscribe to us – if we opt-in).
How to Unhide A Facebook News Feed Item
Change your mind or the fight the night before with your friend/significant other not really that bad? You can reverse and unhide updates that you previously hid.
1. In the left column under Favorites, hover on the News Feed so the edit pen appears.
2. Click on Edit
3. A pop up appears and you scroll down to find the update or app that you wish to unhide.
4. Click the x to the right and then Save. The update will appear in the news feed stream.
New Facebook Lists
Not feeling the love for the Ticker or having Facebook decide which updates you see? A simple way to bring back “old Facebook” is to add your friends to a list. There are new list headers that Facebook has created for users.
a. Close Friends. Adding friends to the close friends list is showing Facebook that you value their updates and they are important to you. This will help Facebook capture additional data about you and your friends. A key feature of the lists is that if you do not want to have the ticker or if your news feed is not showing all updates as it did previously, adding all your “friends” to the close friends and checking that list when you sign in/check your page gives you the old Facebook.
b. Smart Lists. Facebook has created Smart Lists for you that as you can see automatically places those you friend into a list category they deem proper based upon the information in both your and your friends’ profiles.
The lists are created from your profile and the information contained therein. Facebook is looking for users to have complete profiles to be able to pull the data from and match friends with others and place them into categories.
c. Sharing with Lists. Every update you create/add can be shared with a specific list by clicking friends on the update and checking the desired Friends you wish to share the update with.
How to Hide a Facebook Smart List
The smart lists are geared for better user interaction. However, there are some instances where there would be overlap or if you are just not interested in having these lists, you can hide them. They cannot be deleted, just hidden.
1. On the left column, if the list is displayed, click on the edit pen and check Always Hide. If the list is not displayed, click More and a box with all your lists appears. Click on the edit pen and check Always Hide.
2. If you wish to unhide the list, uncheck the Always Hide. You do not have to check Add to Favorites to unhide.
*you can delete old lists that you created or merge them with the new ones.
Facebook is making it all about interacting with one another and sharing, sharing, sharing. These and the new timeline profiles which will be rolled out over the next few months to all users encourage us to put it all out there for everyone to see and join in with us.
Thoughts? What do you think about the Ticker and the News Feed being popularity driven?
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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