Facebook’s NewsFeed makeover

We live in a world of information overload. We all know it and most of us embrace it.  Every time a new Web site springs up I try and jump on the bandwagon because I believe in the world of communication. If you’re not using every possible medium to get information to your readers, you are not doing your job.

So when Facebook made their latest infrastructural change last week, you better believe I noticed. The new NewsFeed, I like to call it. Like most users in response to Facebook changes, I was confused, expecting to see many groups appear asking for the old site back, and most importantly, I was pissed off that because of the changes, Facebook was taking slower than usual to load.

Remember when the NewsFeed first came into our lives? Students were enraged about having every aspect of their online lives published for all to see. We got to see who dumped who, who added each other as friends, every single photo someone posted and links they found interesting. It was mayhem, information vomit all over the screen. But now we couldn’t live without it.

What happened

For those who are still confused about exactly what happened to our beloved social networking and stalking site, the new NewsFeed has been transformed into two separate entities. The new NewsFeed and the LiveFeed. The LiveFeed is what we are used to. The very useful, detailed account of every action taken by all our online friends in real time.

The NewsFeed has changed drastically. Based on algorithms created by super smart math people who work for Facebook, it scores every update coming through our LiveFeed based on how many likes or comments you have given a variety of items. All of those stats are transformed into a NewsFeed of highlighted information based on what you want to see.


Why I hate it

It completely defeats the purpose of Facebook! I spend a majority of my time looking at pictures or status updates of people I would never speak to in person and now that has been taken away from me. No Web site or algorithm should be deciding what information I get to see. I want all of it, all the time.

So please Facebook, if you wanted to limit what information we can see, you shouldn’t have changed the site last year. Now that I’m dependent on my information overload, I can’t handle anything else. Bring back the vomit.

 

Comments

1 comments

Scott Rothman

Mon Oct 26 2009 01:09

Don't forget the crazy over-use of AJAX...

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