The Facebook Blog

At Facebook, one of our main priorities is helping you stay on top of what is going on with the people and things you care about most. That's why today we are beginning to roll out some changes to the home page that simplify your experience by offering two views of News Feed: a summary view of the most interesting activity that's happened in the last day and a real-time view that shows you what is happening right now.

You will be able to catch up on what you may have missed while you were away from Facebook and then easily switch to the real-time stream when you want to see posts as soon as they're shared. Here's how it works:

News Feed
When you log into Facebook, you'll see the most interesting things that happened in the last day in the "News Feed" view. News Feed picks stories that we think you'll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.

Live Feed
Once you've caught up on what you missed, you can click through to "Live Feed" to see what's happening right now. As long as you remain logged into Facebook, you'll continue to see posts and activity from your friends in real-time. You can edit what appears in this view by clicking "Edit Options" at the bottom of the home page.

Why We Made Changes
This past March, we introduced a real-time feed in the central column of your home page so you could see everything your friends were sharing as soon as they shared it. We also included a Highlights section on the right-hand side so you could see the most interesting activity going on in your network.

While seeing real-time activities is extremely valuable, we also want to be sure you don't miss other interesting content. After hearing feedback from many of you and exploring some new designs, we decided with today's changes to move what you used to see in Highlights from the right-hand side to the News Feed view in the main column so you can more easily engage with both views.

We also added information back to News Feed that many of you have asked for, including when your friends have been tagged in photos or have become fans of Pages, in addition to when they RSVP for events or join groups and make new friends. We also made birthdays and events more visible in the right column of the home page.

Some of you may ask why we are changing the home page again. Like you, we know it can be disruptive when things are moved around, but we hope that these changes make Facebook a more valuable experience for you. We put a lot of thought into all the changes we make to the site and do a lot of testing before releasing anything.

As we design new products, we gather feedback by reading emails from users like you and testing ideas with small groups of users. After every change we make, we continue to gather feedback and iterate. Please take some time to play around with this new design, and check out our Help Center if you have any questions.


Raylene, a Facebook engineer, hopes this blog post made its way into your News Feed.