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10 things to know about the new Facebook – USATODAY.com

The social network has made its most aggressive set of changes ever in the last few weeks.

New features like the Ticker — a real-time feed of activity from your friends — have raised eyebrows among Facebook users.

And then last week Facebook unveiled Timeline, which brings long-forgotten archived posts to the surface and makes them easier to see.

As with any major change, there has been a significant amount of misinformation out there about what the new Facebook means for its users.

Here is a look at the 10 things you should know about Facebook's changes.

1. The Ticker isn't actually revealing any new information. It is, though, showing users a lot of information they probably wouldn't have otherwise bothered to look for.

In it, you'll see any activity from your friends that you're allowed by them to see (and always have been). If a friend is commenting on another friend's wall (even one that you're not connected to) and that wall is set to be publicly viewable, you'll see that post in your Ticker.

2. Every post you make on a public fan page will show up in all of your friends' Tickers. Because fan pages are public by default, this information will be accessible to anyone.

3. Check a post's security level before commenting. There is a small icon under each item in your news feed. Hover over that to see who can see the post.

The globe icon means the update is public and viewable by anyone on the Web. There is also an icon for updates viewable only to friends and to custom lists of people.

4. Be extra mindful when commenting on a public post. Any comment you leave on a status update will be sent to the Tickers of every person on your friend list.

All posts from fan pages are public.

5. Your own activity won't show up in your real-time Ticker. This can make it a bit hard to troubleshoot exactly which parts of your activity are being published.

Facebook must be assuming that you already know what activity you're performing and don't need to see it.

6. Facebook says Timeline will be available in a few weeks, but you can enable it now. I used these instructions from Mashable to start mine up.

7. Once you've enabled Timeline, you'll have some time to clean it up if you'd like. Even those of us who have always been very careful about what we post on Facebook will be surprised by some content on our Timeline.

Any post on the Timeline can be hidden from view, deleted from Facebook or changed to be viewable to just some of your friends.

Once you've cleaned it up, you can then choose to publish your Timeline so that it's viewable to other Facebook users.

8. With its new class of apps, Facebook is looking for "frictionless" experiences. This means that you'll see fewer dialog boxes asking if you'd like to publish a certain kind of activity to your newsfeed.

When you first set up an app, such as music streaming service Spotify, it will ask for your permission to access your information and let you set that behavior to public or friends-only. You can also define a more specific list of friends to have access to that information.

But then you won't be asked again. It will become much easier to forget which apps are broadcasting your activity. After Spotify is given permission, each song you listen to (even the occasional embarrassing one) will be broadcast to Facebook.

9. Subscribers are people who sign up to receive your public posts in their news feed. If you've enabled this, anyone who adds you as a friend will automatically first become a subscriber. If you confirm the friend request, the person will be elevated to "friend." If you turn down the friend request by clicking "Not now," that person will still remain subscribed to your public posts.

10. When you defriend someone, they will still be subscribed to your public posts. If you want to defriend someone and prevent them from seeing what you post, you'll have to also block them.

Contact Mark W. Smith at msmith@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @markdubya or subscribe to his posts on Facebook.
 
This is amusing me ... I need to make sure to add my broken bones to my fb info.

newfb.jpg
 
Why don't they tell you when it's a friends birthday anymore. :scream: I can't keep track of these things myself. :angry:
 
oh well maybe no one I know has a birthday today! :hmm: But on Sunday a friend had a birthday and the way I noticed was seeing mutual friends comment on her page. I don't think I noticed it on the side of my page.
 
The most annoying thing about the ticker is that it shows EVERYTHING your friends do. So if a friend comments/likes someone's status/photo etc that I don't have as a friend, it still shows up. That's rubbish. Because now if I want to talk shit about something I have to stop and think.
 
The most annoying thing about the ticker is that it shows EVERYTHING your friends do. So if a friend comments/likes someone's status/photo etc that I don't have as a friend, it still shows up. That's rubbish. Because now if I want to talk shit about something I have to stop and think.
it actually only does it when the person has their wall visible to everyone, not just friends. :)
 
About the birthday thing. The other day a friend had a birthday. She does have her birthday entered in her info, but I had no notification type thing on the side where it used to tell me it was someone's birthday. If I went to her actual wall or info page it said "Today is her birthday" at the top, but I don't visit every friends wall every single day. I knew it was her birthday, but if I hadn't known it already I wouldn't have known except for the mutual friends posts. (Which is also how I found out about another friends birthday the other day, or I would not have known, and he also has his birthday in his info) Also it used to say when a friend's birthday was coming up soon, that was nice, but alas is no more.
I haven't had a FB account for very long, but in that short time I know it's only got worse since I started! :grumpy:
 
That's weird, because for me the birthdays appear right below the live feed box. And it's actually more convenient now because you click on the birthday feed and it allows you to post to their wall right from there. This is very helpful on days when multiple people have birthdays.
 
I have that event thing down there, and I even clicked "see all" on her birthday to be sure it wasn't hidden or something and it wasn't. Maybe something changed in my settings when the switch happened, I'll have to look around.
 
That's weird, because for me the birthdays appear right below the live feed box. And it's actually more convenient now because you click on the birthday feed and it allows you to post to their wall right from there. This is very helpful on days when multiple people have birthdays.

you have the new timeline layout right? I'm still on the old 'new' ticker layout (too lazy to fiddle :reject:) and I have nothing even though I do have friends with birthdays today . . . all I get is an email at the beginning of the week to say 'you have x number of friends with birthdays this week' . . . :grumpy: . . . maybe they fixed that glitch with the timeline layout?
 
My birthdays are now showing up again. But I know for a fact a few people had bdays earlier in the week, and it's stated as such in their profiles, and they did not show up on my page.
 
Don't know if this happens to anyone else, but I really hate how they separate the News Feed, or what was it: Recent Stories, Top Stories, From Earlier Today...but for me, after refreshing the page a few times, it just shows me Recent Stories. What a mess. :down:
 
Don't know if this happens to anyone else, but I really hate how they separate the News Feed, or what was it: Recent Stories, Top Stories, Frome Earlier Today...but for me, after refreshing the page a few times, it just shows me Recent Stories. What a mess. :down:

Yeah I really hate that too. Boo! :grumpy:
 
Download the "Better Facebook" plugin if you're using Firefox. It works well, and you can make it green!
 
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