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.

Since introducing the new home page, we've been working to make it easier for you to stay updated with your friends and connections. Your News Feed, in the center of your home page, offers you an updated stream of what's happening with them. Beginning today, that stream is going live.

We've always focused the stream on real-time updates, but before today you needed to refresh your browser to see the most recent posts since logging in. The stream now updates automatically and gives you the option to view new posts with a prompt at the top of the... page immediately below the Publisher.



If you click the prompt, all of the new stories will expand for you to view in your stream.



We're rolling these changes out gradually, so they will be available to everyone soon.

Your feedback played an important role in this change. Live updating for the stream was one of the most common requests we received for the home page, and we plan to keep making improvements. The best way to share your continued feedback is through the "submit feedback" link on the home page tour. We may add more ways for you to instantly update your stream in the future.


Adam Hupp, an engineer working on the stream, thinks his friends' newest posts are refreshing.

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.

Over the past five years, Facebook has evolved to make sharing information more efficient and to give people more control. This year, we are going to continue making the flow of information even faster and more customized to those you want to connect and communicate with, no matter how broadly or privately. To give you a framework for how we're thinking about these upcoming changes, it's important to understand how Facebook has developed and where we're heading.

The Social Graph and The Stream

When we started Facebook in 2004, it was just a basic... directory with some names, interests, contact information and a profile picture. If you wanted to find out about a friend's updates, you had to check your friend list for updated profiles and visit each friend's profile to see what had changed. This worked because people didn't change their profiles too often. Over time we added photos, videos, groups and events, and people started sharing more and more information. So in 2006, we launched News Feed, which highlighted for you the most interesting updates from your friends on your home page. It helped you understand everything that was going on.

As more and more information flows through Facebook, the need for people to easily discover the most recent and relevant content has grown. That's why when we redesigned the profile last year, we focused on the Wall—the stream of information telling you what is going on with a person—rather than the previous profile style of boxes containing unchanging information. This was a big step in our evolution because it moved Facebook in the direction of helping people share immediate experiences with one another: a thought, a status, a photo, a note, a feeling.

In 2007, we popularized the term Social Graph to describe how Facebook maps out people's connections. The idea is that these connections—whether friendships, affiliations or interests—exist already in the real world, and all we're trying to do is map them out. We believe that connecting people to their friends is just the beginning, and we're working hard on making Facebook a place for people to connect with and keep track of all the interests in their lives.

We think that as it becomes easier to connect and share across the social graph, people—as well as companies, governments and other organizations—will share more information about what is happening with them. As this happens, the world will become more open and people will have a better understanding of everything that is going on around them.

One way to think about this is as a timeline—or a stream. As people share more, the timeline gets filled in more and more with what is happening with everything you're connected to. The pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it. As this happens, people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself.

In order to make this a reality, we must build Facebook to give everyone the power to share anything they want and connect with anyone they want. The way we're doing that is to first extend people's ability to connect with everything that interests them, and to give people a way to get updates from all of these connections. Then, we're going to increase the pace of the stream, so you can immediately see what is going on around you.

What's New Today

Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations. Once called Pages, these new profiles will now begin looking and functioning just like user profiles. Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations. These folks will now be able to share status updates, videos, photos or anything else they want, in the same way your friends can already. You'll be able to keep up with all of their activity in your News Feed. This means that you can find out that Oprah is reading a book backstage before a show, CNN posted a breaking story or U2 is working on a new song, just as you would see that your friend uploaded new photos from her trip to Europe.

We're also going to make some changes to the home page. The new home page will let you see everything that's shared by your friends and connections as it happens. It will also provide you more control by letting you choose exactly who you see among the people and things you are connected to. You can decide you no longer want to get updates from your old friend from high school who you rarely talk to, or you can filter the stream to only see updates about your family members. And now, if you want, you can read what President Obama is saying on the same page as your best friend. You can find out what it is your mother, your high school classmate or President Obama are doing, thinking and sharing right now just by logging into Facebook.

We'll begin rolling out the new home page next week, so please check out our home page tour to see the new design and let us know what you think about it. This is an exciting move for us and we have more coming, so keep an eye on the blog for more updates about upcoming products.