Tech Notes: New Facebook changes

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September 23, 2011, 9:36 am

Facebook questions answered.

Question: Why don’t I have the new Facebook yet?
Answer: Facebook rolls out its new features gradually, so not all 800 million users see the updates at once. First, the changes are tested internally Facebook employees. Once they are public, the changes are rolled out geographically. U.S. users will likely see the changes first, but even that could depend on where you live. You also may need to close and reopen your browser or log out and log back in. The just-announced timeline feature won’t be available users until later this year — Facebook has not yet said when.

Q: Why does Facebook keep changing things? I liked it the way it was.
A: Because it wants to make more money.

Q: What is the scrolling, Twitter-like list of my Facebook friends’ activities doing on the right side of the new layout?
A: Facebook ripped this off from Twitter. The idea is to show a live feed of everything going on with your Facebook friends and pages you follow as it is happening. There will be information here that doesn’t appear on your regular news feed, such as songs your friends are listening to on the music service Spotify, news stories they are reading or, eventually, even movies or TV shows they watched on Netflix.

Q:Will FB make people go away with these changes?
A: CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday Facebook passed a milestone recently where it had 500 million of its users logged in at once. So while a lot of users may hate the changes, it is not driving them away. The company is betting it knows what people want.

Q: How do I go back to the “Old Facebook”?
A: You can’t. And don’t even try. The links to go back to the “old Facebook” will bring you a mountain of spam.

Q: What is this “TOPNEWS?”
A: The “top news” feature has already existed on Facebook, it just didn’t automatically appear on the top of your news feed every time you logged in. This is the stuff Facebook thinks you will be most interested in. So it’s updates from friends you interact with the most, big news stories from media accounts you follow or photos from your friends that got a lot of comments, for example. It’s not an exact science, so you can uncheck a top story by clicking on a tiny triangle on its upper left corner.