From Tracie: Facebook Killed My Newsfeed

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Facebook Killed My Newsfeed

We woke up to a whole new facebook this morning. Some of the changes, like pictures showing up larger in the news feed, are nice. Other changes are annoying.

You no longer have the "Most Recent" option to see updates in chronological order in your news feed. Instead, you have "Top Stories", the things facebook considers to be the most interesting.

The other new edition is what I like to call the Stalker-Ticker. It is on your right sidebar, and shows updates of EVERYTHING your friends are doing on facebook - a little scary.

This is my solution:
At the bottom of the left sidebar, click on Lists. This will take you to the a screen with a list of all the lists you have created (including the new lists that facebook added recently). I think that is the most times the word list has been used in one sentence.

Click on Create a List and give it a snazzy name:

Once you name your list, you will see this screen:
Click on Add Friends, or use the pull down menu on the right to manage your list.

Your box of friends will pop up:
Click on ALL of your friends (hopefully they look less pixely than mine) and click the blue Done button.

You will then find yourself viewing the recent updates from everyone in your new list. If you would like to add the pages you have liked, click on the Manage List pull down and choose Add/Remove Friends: 
When the box of friends pops up, use the pull down on the left side of the box, and choose pages. Select all your pages, and click the blue Done button. 

You are almost finished. 
To make it easier to get to your list, go back to the list page and click on the little edit pencil by your new list, and add it to favorites. This will make it appear near the top of your sidebar. You can see that I have several lists that are set to favorites, and they always show up. 

I am bypassing facebook's news feed and using my News Feed List instead. This ensures that I see everything being posted, and that they appear in chronological order, without any of that top story silliness. 

There is one more big bonus. When using a list to view your feed, the new Stalker-Ticker does not show up!!

Of course, you may not want to have every person and every page show up in your feed. That is your choice. You make your lists as large or small as you like. But if you want the option of seeing everything in order the way the old Most Recent setting worked, this is the best way I have found to set it up.

15 comments:

  1. Thank you for this. I posted it to my own FB because I'm tired of hearing the bitching and moaning.

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  2. You are so helpful! THANK YOU! I hope this post spreads like wildfire so more people will see how amazing you are. YAY!

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  3. Stumbled and posted to Facebook! Great job!

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  4. Awesome! And getting rid of the stalker ticker is the icing on the cake! Thanks for this!

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  5. Tracie.... this is excellent information!!! I'm so glad you've posted this! Shared it with my friends. :)

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  6. Thanks for writing up the steps Tracie!! I told several people on Facebook to just use the lists... I got tired of all the whining so haven't been on Facebook today...lol Going to post your step-by-step directions and see if that helps... I was just too lazy to type it out today! So thanks!!!

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  7. Just tweeted a question about this and here's the answer. WTH is Facebook's problem - switching it up every 6 months?

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  8. I've been using lists for ages - I'm "friends" with a bunch of strangers, thanks to Castle Age and Etsy, so the people I actually know are organized into a list called "me hearties." :D

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  9. Thank you! I was one of those complaining because I couldn't see the things I wanted to see and couldn't figure out how to change it. I'm sharing this on facebook for sure :-)

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  10. Thank you thank you thank you! I shared your post with all my FB friends (well, the ones who will see it anyway!)

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  11. Ta-da! Bravo!
    I only went on FB for a short time yesterday and was ready to throw it out the window ;)

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  12. Thank you! I hate the new interface. I liked Recent Posts and I don't like the Stalker. At all!

    I wish they would stop messing with the interface -- please!!!

    :-)
    Traci

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  13. Thanks for sharing this.. I was hating that "top stories"!

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  14. I'm not liking the new layout very much either. Thank you for these helpful tricks. Can't wait to put the brakes on the stalker ticker!

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  15. Good reminders if and when I need it. Thank you Tracie.

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