HeatherO

Bring the “Old Facebook” Back

HeatherO on 11 9, 2009

Change is hard, and that sentiment is echoing daily among Facebook users since the social networking site made changes to the way that it displays information that is posted.

The bad news is, it’s probably not ‘coming back’. So rather than pout and suck thumbs, we have to get used to it, or find ways that make it easier! Here are a few explanations and tips to do that.

(Note: there are 3rd party applications that claim to ‘go back to the old way’ and many folks are missing lots of updates and now cannot figure out how to go back to the new one!)

I will go over the options as follows:
Already exist:
Live Feed
News Feed
Status Updates
Photos, videos, links, Pages

Other options (takes a little time to set up, but worth it!)
Friend lists
Tweetdeck

Live Feed: this is what your feed used to be before the ‘highlights’ were moved to the sidebar. This is real time as people hit enter, info.
Ironically this is one of the features that friendfeed and twitter users love most!
This feed will include all updates, and everything that is posted. They have also gone back to including “who friended who” here, which again, many don’t like. It’s one line, and while that mean seem like noise to you, the truth is, as you scroll by it’s a split miniscule of a second of your time! It is also the only way (other than friend suggestions) to meet anyone that you don’t already know (one of the greatest values twitter has over facebook in my opinion).
The biggest complaint with this feed is “I’m missing stuff!”  There is a handy dandy “older posts” link at the bottom of the page. Keep using it until you start seeing posts that you’ve already seen, and you won’t miss anything.

News Feed
This is similar to what’s known on Friendfeed as “Best of Day”. These are posts that Facebook deems to be the most interesting based on the number of people who commented or liked them. Yeah, I know, you don’t want Facebook ‘deciding for you’! They aren’t deleting the others! They are just giving you the option of that view. If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.

Status Updates
Lots of folks have been posting “Drag the status updates to the top so that will be your default view. That is the old view.” Yes, you can drag it, and make it your default, but it’s not ‘the old view” per se. the Status Updates do not include photos, links, or videos. You can however view these in their own ‘feed’ however, and just view the status updates, and then go to the left sidebar and click to view:
Photos
Videos
Links

Be sure to click on the “Pages” view too. If you are going to “fan” pages, you might as well skim over their updates.

Friend Lists:
Another option is friend lists. I have used these lists for some time  because it is easier to “not miss things’ when you are viewing them in “chunks”. Think of it like TV. You can create your own channels and then ’surf’ those that you want to.
You can put your friends into one or more lists like: “high school, local, work, etc” and view them by group. All of their posts will appear here (pics, vids, etc) and you probably won’t have to scroll page after page as with the live feed. This takes a little time to set up, but is well worth it!
The extra ‘bonus’ is that when you post something you can actually set the post to only be seen by, or not be seen by those in a certain list (pretty handy!).
Here is a screencast on how to create lists:

Lastly, those of you on twitter may be familiar with tweetdeck (if you have not updated tweetdeck recently you need to in order to use these features).

Even if you don’t use twitter, you can also use tweetdeck just for facebook (or myspace, but why?). In tweetdeck you can create side by side columns such as: photos, videos, status updates, news feed, etc. This is handy because you can skim over them quickly, and you can actually make comments and like posts from here as well. The columns and text are smaller, so it may take a little getting used to. I still go to facebook to check updates, but do use TD to skim over updates throughout the day. I especially love the photos column because I seem to notice them more.

The color scheme is customizable so when you download Tweetdeck it won’t look like mine, it will be black. You will see the facebook “f” at the top, and click that to choose your columns. You can also choose which friends you want to see (put them in a group).

Unfortunately, I can’t bring the “old facebook” back, or make you like the new one. I hope that this information will help you to understand it better though, and help you to find ways to use it that will be helpful to you!

Please comment below and let me know if this helps, and any other ways you might be ‘navigating’ the new layout.

If you have questions, feel free to ask!

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