socialmedian: Want Live Status Updates Back? Here’s How to Hack the New Facebook Design

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Want Live Status Updates Back? Here’s How to Hack the New Facebook Design

Source: Paul Dunay's shared items in Google Reader

Oct 27, 2009

Summary

When Facebook launched the real-time-stream version of the news feed in March, some users liked it, but many said they didn’t. At the time, people said they preferred the former design, an automated news feed that showed you interesting but older items instead of a live stream.

So now the new Facebook news feed shows you the automated news feed, similar to the home page before the March design. But by this point, millions of users have apparently gotten so used to the the live stream of (mostly) status updates that they want it back again, judging from various news reports and Facebook protest groups. So here’s a couple tips for how to bring it back, more or less, in the new design.

Before we get started, note that the new design does sort of include a live stream in the main news feed interface; you can just click on it it at the top center of the news feed home page to make it your default view. Note that this isn’t quite what the old feed was. That one contained mostly status updates, as other may other feed items, like photos, were moved into a “Highlights”