In an attempt to help us manage information overload, Facebook has implemented a new way for us to view the status updates of our friends, fan pages we belong to and groups we belong to.
I’ve gotten a lot of questions from my friends asking me to help make sense of this development.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEWS FEED AND LIVE FEED
Let me start with the most overwhelming one. The Live Feed (think Twitter on steroids) allows you to see EVERYTHING that your friends are doing in real-time. The everything part can be quite overwhelming because you can literlly know every friend they make, every group they join and every wall post made. Makes me think of Sting.
The News Feed is the section that you see when you first login to Facebook. Facebook takes it upon themselves to aggregate ‘the most interesting content that your friends are posting’. Does this sound a little like Google behavior to you? Some geeky Facebook dude came up with a nifty algorithm which they say is based on a few factors:
- how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content
- who posted the content
- what type of content it is (photo, video, status update)
What weights each of these factors plays is yet to be determined. I’ll keep you posted.
Check Out These Other Posts for Trouble Shooting Tips:
- Why isn’t my friend Penelope’s stories showing up on the Live Feed
- How can I hide those annoying quiz applications?
- How can I organize my Facebook News Feeds?
