Facebook changes design again; modifications explained

When you hop on Facebook now, you might notice some stark differences from previous days.

The company has rolled out some design changes to its news feed, released a “ticker” and also altered the way that friends are grouped together.

Like most changes Facebook makes, the new design has stirred up the hive , prompting negative reactions.  Don’t be surprised to see plenty of status updates today complaining about the redesign.

To help ease the process of change, here’s a breakdown of the design changes:

Ticker
The ticker appears on the right side of the news freed, and it features the most recent activity from a user’s friends. Facebook users can scroll this to see the latest status updates and interactions between their friends.

For example, the ticker might display something like, “ Friend X just commented on Friend Y’s status.”

Also, by clicking on a person’s name in the ticker, that box expands to display more information about that specific post.

With the ticker, as you scroll up and down your newsfeed, the ticker moves with you, so that it is always on the screen that you are seeing.

News Feed
This redesigned news feed incorporates the recently launched “Smart lists,” which groups friends based on workplace, education and location. Now, users can change their news feed to show information from a specific list, rather than just all of their friends or pages that the user like.

The redesigned feed also focuses on the most popular topics and posts from your friends or pages that you like. The idea is that the news feed will show you want you want to see, therefore improving your overall Facebooking time.

It also shows larger version photos that your friends have posted, compared to the previous design.

Changes and tweaks have become routine for Facebook, and more alterations could likely come in the near future, especially with the company’s f8 conference on Thursday.  What do you think about the changes? 

To help explain the changes in more detail, take a look at a video posted by Facebook: