Welcome to Your New Home Page

by Peter X. Deng Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 1:38pm

Last week, we shared our philosophy behind the new updates and changes on Facebook to give you a better understanding of why we make certain product decisions. We explained how we've been mapping out the Social Graph, or the network of connections that exist in the world, by enabling you to share with everyone and everything you care about. As more and more is shared, we want you to be able to find out everything that is going on in the world around you at any given moment, or shape the stream of information most relevant to you.

We set up a tour on Facebook for you to learn more about the product changes and to give you a way to offer feedback. We received over 30,000 emails, and want to thank all of you who wrote in to share your opinions. Today, we are beginning to roll out the new home page. The update will happen slowly, so everyone should have the new home page over the coming days.

We think you'll find that the new home page makes it even easier for you to create content and receive real-time updates from the people and connections you have on Facebook. It also gives you even more control over who and what you see in your stream by offering new filters. Below are some of the features we're most excited about.

Real-Time Stream

The biggest part of the new home page is your improved News Feed, or the stream of content that's most relevant to you. The stream lets you know what's happening right now in your world by showing you everything your friends and other connections, such as celebrities, athletes and politicians, are sharing. The stream also makes it simple for you to comment on content and participate in conversations in real-time.

The Publisher

One of the important things to remember about the stream is that you are a part of it. That's why an improved Publisher now sits on the top of the home page. It makes it easy to add your own status, links, photos, thoughts and more into the stream. The Publisher has been updated across the site, including on your profile. So anywhere you create content on Facebook, you will know it's going into the stream.

Controlling Your Stream

When you're reading the stream to keep up with friends, you'll see everything that's happening. Of course, you may be more interested in certain friends. You might have one friend who posts about local events while you live elsewhere in the country or the world, which is why the left hand column of the new home page is dedicated to filters. We built in some default filters based around location, people you connect with most often, and your existing Friend Lists. Creating new Friend List filters or modifying old ones is easy from the Friends page. You can also filter the stream to show you posts from specific applications.

Discovering Content

The final piece of the new home page is the Highlights section. Highlights shows you what's happening over a longer period of time—as opposed to the stream, which shows you what's happening right now. This section will feature photos, notes and other content you probably don't want to miss: events lots of your friends are attending, links many people have commented on, public profiles your friends connect to and so on. Birthday notifications and pokes will be in this section, as well.

To keep the design consistent across the site, you'll also notice that your profile will look a little different and more like the home page. The main difference is that your profile picture now appears beside the posts on the Wall tab.

If you have any questions, check out our Help Center, or take the tour. And please keep the feedback coming—we want to hear what you think.

Peter Deng, a product manager, is watching content from his friends stream by on the Facebook home page.

Written about 9 months ago

Teresa, Nada, Ralph and 6,031 others like this.

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Sherry Rogers-Diller Vargason

I'm not thrilled with the changes. It is somewhat confusing and frankly I don't think Facebook knows who I want to be in contact with. It would really be preferable if FB would let us know in advance that these changes were to occur and why..people might be a little more open to it under those circumstances. Nobody likes change sprung on them.

October 24 at 3:46pm

Lara Willing

I really wish you would make changes an OFFERING instead of force them down my throat. When you make major changes, how about at least leaving a way that I can choose to keep my home page the old way!?!? What is up with Facebook making STOOOOPid home page changes without warning and that do not offer any improvement. We now have live news feed ... See Morewhere you pick a few random posts from the last couple of days to show me, plus EVERY friend addition (stoopid) or status update which doesnt' show links or videos, or news feed which is bearable other than all the "became a fan of" posts that I have no choice whether to see or not, plus news feed seems to be different all the time. Not sure if it's really up to date or another random assortment. Please stop "improving" the home page (I use that word VERY loosely)

October 27 at 11:45pm

Jarrett Sanchez

Welcome to Your New Home PageShare
by Peter X. Deng Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 4:38am
Last week, we shared our philosophy behind the new updates and changes on Facebook to give you a better understanding of why we make certain product decisions. We explained how we've been mapping out the Social Graph, or the network of connections that exist in the world, by enabling you to share with everyone and everything you care about. As more and more is shared, we want you to be able to find out everything that is going on in the world around you at any given moment, or shape the stream of information most relevant to you.

We set up a tour on Facebook for you to learn more about the product changes and to give you a way to offer feedback. We received over 30,000 emails, and want to thank all of you who wrote in to share your opinions. Today, we are beginning to roll out the new home page. The update will happen slowly, so everyone should have the new home page over the coming days.... See More

We think you'll find that the new home page makes it even easier for you to create content and receive real-time updates from the people and connections you have on Facebook. It also gives you even more control over who and what you see in your stream by offering new filters. Below are some of the features we're most excited about.

Real-Time Stream

The biggest part of the new home page is your improved News Feed, or the stream of content that's most relevant to you. The stream lets you know what's happening right now in your world by showing you everything your friends and other connections, such as celebrities, athletes and politicians, are sharing. The stream also makes it simple for you to comment on content and participate in conversations in real-time.

The Publisher

One of the important things to remember about the stream is that you are a part of it. That's why an improved Publisher now sits on the top of the home page. It makes it easy to add your own status, links, photos, thoughts and more into the stream. The Publisher has been updated across the site, including on your profile. So anywhere you create content on Facebook, you will know it's going into the stream.

Controlling Your Stream

When you're reading the stream to keep up with friends, you'll see everything that's happening. Of course, you may be more interested in certain friends. You might have one friend who posts about local events while you live elsewhere in the country or the world, which is why the left hand column of the new home page is dedicated to filters. We built in some default filters based around location, people you connect with most often, and your existing Friend Lists. Creating new Friend List filters or modifying old ones is easy from the Friends page. You can also filter the stream to show you posts from specific applications.

Discovering Content

The final piece of the new home page is the Highlights section. Highlights shows you what's happening over a longer period of time—as opposed to the stream, which shows you what's happening right now. This section will feature photos, notes and other content you probably don't want to miss: events lots of your friends are attending, links many people have commented on, public profiles your friends connect to and so on. Birthday notifications and pokes will be in this section, as well.

To keep the design consistent across the site, you'll also notice that your profile will look a little different and more like the home page. The main difference is that your profile picture now appears beside the posts on the Wall tab.

If you have any questions, check out our Help Center, or take the tour. And please keep the feedback coming—we want to hear what you think.

Peter Deng, a product manager, is watching content from his friends stream by on the Facebook home page.
Updated about 8 months ago · Comment · Like
6,034 people like this.
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Mohamed MuhtasebSomething else, it's about the timing..
Under every feed news is the time that it happened in.
E.G:"15 minutes ago" It's very useful though..
But how about.. When clicking on that.. I doesn't lead you to it's owner Profile..
What if it gathers all Feeds that been happening 15 minutes ago! Pretty impressive I think and useful too!
September 24 at 5:50pm · Report

Jaleel Bowensmy home page is blank and i dont no what to do to fix it . please repley and tell how do i get it fix or how to put on this new home page..........
October 6 at 6:50pm · Report

Monika Kostovska Versovskasheat fb.
October 25 at 3:57am · Report

Sherry Rogers-Diller VargasonI'm not thrilled with the changes. It is somewhat confusing and frankly I don't think Facebook knows who I want to be in contact with. It would really be preferable if FB would let us know in advance that these changes were to occur and why..people might be a little more open to it under those circumstances. Nobody likes change sprung on them.
October 25 at 6:46am · Report

Lara WillingI really wish you would make changes an OFFERING instead of force them down my throat. When you make major changes, how about at least leaving a way that I can choose to keep my home page the old way!?!? What is up with Facebook making STOOOOPid home page changes without warning and that do not offer any improvement. We now have live news feed where you pick a few random posts from the last couple of days to show me, plus EVERY friend addition (stoopid) or status update which doesnt' show links or videos, or news feed which is bearable other than all the "became a fan of" posts that I have no choice whether to see or not, plus news feed seems to be different all the time. Not sure if it's really up to date or another random assortment. Please stop "improving" the home page (I use that word VERY loosely)
Wed at 2:45pm · Report

October 29 at 10:27pm