I’m sure you’ve noticed all the many little changes in Facebook recently. Well, hold on to your iPads and smartphones; the new Timeline look is radically different. Some users are already experiencing their new Facebook profile, which looks like their own personal blog site, reflecting their life events over the years. (I’m sure I won’t be interested in the new feature of sharing music so I can hear what a friend is listening to in real time. Maybe you will.)
Your News Feed
The news feed now has “top stories” with a news ticker feed of posts from all your friends in the right sidebar. I think that’s fine for me because my friend list is 500+ and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on Facebook.
To control who is in your feed and how often:
- Find the little box with an arrow to the right of your friend’s news feed. Click on the arrow and then choose from one of three options. The default is “most updates.” but you can choose a higher or lower setting for specific people. This controls the percentage of updates you’ll see from various friends.
- Take a little time to put your friends in lists. These will appear in the left sidebar so you can look at news of specific groups, such as family, instead of wading through your entire news feed.
Your Profile
Personally, I think the new look is more attractive, but I’m actually more interested in function, so I don’t know what I think about using it yet. Is the profile really “for me” or for those who visit my site? Will the timeline really pick up what I consider important milestones? Will casual visitors to my site want to know so many intimate details of what I do, read, or attend? (Some people may even need to spend time “cleaning up their act” by deleting different movies they’ve watched or books they’ve read.)
Will more people be driven to use Google Plus or other social media? If so, Facebook may lose its enormous popularity (making it currently the world’s third largest “country” when compared to global populations).
Will we adjust to this and be comfortable with the new site three weeks from now? Does the whole dynamic change for you? If you’re ready to jump ship:
- Look at how Facebook and Google+ compare to each other.
- RockMelt or Bing Social may be other options for you. You would keep your Facebook and Twitter accounts, but use either of these as your browser with Facebook and Twitter interfaces.
MORE FOR YOU:
- Where to complain to Facebook about their changes, if you want to.
- How to Enable the New Facebook Timeline NOW by Mashable
eQuipping for eMinistry 
I’ve been playing around with it, and the new list options seems to be Facebook’s answer to the Google + challenge. With a bit of patience you can now tailor more of what you see – and what you don’t see. And you can now control to whom your status goes based on these lists. These are welcome changes (in a world that will change, regardless of our lack of comfort with that fact!).
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Thanks, Karen!
I was thinking, too, that this was Facebook’s response to Google+.
I like being in one place where most people are (Facebook, e.g.). If friends and family scatter to various social networks, it’ll be hard to keep up with them. I wouldn’t want to join several in order to do what I do now from Facebook.
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