Facebook Launching New Home Page Today, Taking the Live Stream Mainstream
When Facebook users login today, they’re going to find something new – and, Facebook hopes, addicting – a real time stream of all their friends’ updates from across Facebook, the Facebook Platform, and Facebook Connect.
With the latest home page redesign, Facebook is adopting the “live stream” model that Twitter has made popular with several million users. Now, Facebook is bringing it to the masses.
Facebook’s intention with the redesign is to increase engagement and sharing by users. As Mark Zuckerberg wrote last week,
As people share more, the timeline gets filled in more and more with what is happening with everything you’re connected to. The pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it. As this happens, people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself.
How will users react? When Facebook originally launched the News Feed for the first time in September 2006, users initially responded in a roar of protest, only to stop shortly later after realizing the power of the News Feed to deliver valuable information about their friends. Facebook is hoping the success of the “live stream” won’t be measured by user protests this time around. However, that kind of reaction is highly unlikely – Facebook users are now much more accustomed to the nature of syndicated sharing Facebook has implemented in the News Feed. While the original launch of the News Feed was the first time Facebook users experienced that dynamic, simply accelerating the pace of the stream this time around is a smaller change for users to understand.
Will Facebook eventually open up the public timeline, as Twitter has? Such a move would make Facebook’s sharing stream much more valuable to application developers and third parties interested in mining the data for market research purposes. While many have speculated that Facebook will eventually open the feed given its recent symbolic move to join the OpenID Foundation and open up new stauts APIs for application developers, Facebook hasn’t made any official announcements yet.
Now that the live stream is core to the Facebook user experience, developers and marketers should adapt how they think about getting the most out of their Facebook efforts. We’ve prepared detailed guides, and further screenshots of today’s release are below:
- 8 Ways the Changing Facebook Home Page Will Affect Application Virality
- Facebook to Launch Redesigned Pages for Businesses – Tour & First Impressions
Update 1:40pm PT: Facebook says the new home page is rolling out now, but it will be migrating users slowly on a rolling basis and “everyone should have the new home page over the coming days.”
New Facebook Home Page Screenshots
March 11th, 2009 at 3:31 am
I’m not seeing it. Not happy. I want the new, new Facebook!
March 11th, 2009 at 3:34 am
Looking forward to this update as realtime is what it’s all about at the moment. I need to create lists to control the noise! :)
March 11th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Still not live.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:45 am
its probably not live becuase its still not even 7am!! Give it until noon.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:56 am
“Facebook is adopting the “live stream” model that Twitter has made popular with several million users.”
I might just be being stupid here, but my Twitter page isn’t a live stream, in that I have to keep refreshing it.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:02 am
not live yet, in the meantime I’ll be on friendfeed
March 11th, 2009 at 5:05 am
You’re right, it’s early, but on the East Coast it’s 8:00am.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Still not live yet here.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Are there *ANY* plans for some RSS functionality?
Having a lifestream for all your friends (and/or specific friends) and groups, etc., would really open up facebook to the rest of the web… driving more and more traffic to the site.
March 11th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Nothing yet, 10:23 on east coast. Maybe we have to wait until 9AM Pacific time.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:06 am
4pm in the UK (7am FB-PST) still not here
more like it going to be Thursday for me and anyone right of the Atlantic if it still not here at 11pm (4pm PST).
At least i have some amusement and joy tonight to be forward to when come home from work as it make a change from the vibe of early contract redundancy being called since Monday with me on a 1 year contract and they want all none permanent out by April and i only month 5!)
Citizen Advice and Unions have been informed as they will broke union policy and contract
March 11th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Still waiting…
March 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Still waiting, but starting to get forced logins on each refresh or page change.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Still not live yet here either… it will be rolling out in waves to different users.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Here’s in Washington, DC, it’s still the old design.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
still the same design in nyc
March 11th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
4pm on the East Coast, still now new design. Wth.
March 11th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Still waiting for the new FB here in TN.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
[...] expected, Facebook has launched the redesigned Facebook home page this afternoon. Here’s how it [...]
March 11th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Live stream must be cool but the new design looks really tacky for me ;-{
March 11th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
[...] TechCrunch, Inside Facebook [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 1:14 am
[...] Via | Insidefacebook.com [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
[...] are being used by brands like Coca-Cola and publishers like the New York Times in an effort to become part of the new Facebook stream – seen by the Facebook community in real time. The pages will also serve as landing pages for [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 5:30 am
[...] dem Update von Facebook in dieser Nacht hat sich das Social Network deutlich zu einem Livestreaming-Ansatz [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 8:05 am
This new change is hideous. I loved the last iteration and the level of control it gave me.
Now I have app spam in the form of feed filters and highlights from apps I don’t have installed or have indeed blocked. Yet I can’t add filters for apps I use regularly.
The events/birthdays item has no link to show you ALL events and birthdays. Users have to manually set up a link to events on that FB taskbar at the bottom (that only allows 6 icons anyway).
March 21st, 2009 at 10:58 am
[...] Facebook launched the new home page last week, it created a major new opportunity for Page owners to reach fans: by updating their [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
[...] been almost 2 weeks now since Facebook launched the new “stream” home page. At the time, we published our guide for application [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Stinks. Low level of user control. Not intuitive. A continuous stream of crap that is difficult to sort through as “real time updates” get lost in the clutter.
Give users control over the layout of their homepage and don’t write such biased articles in the future!
March 25th, 2009 at 3:31 am
[...] Facebook Launching New Home Page Today, Taking the Live Stream Mainstream [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
i have recently signed up for facebook three times and still cant get anything to happen so just delete my subscription and i’ll pretend this never happened… i’m not going to all this trouble for this
April 7th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
[...] Facebook launched the redesigned home page a month ago, it gave applications more prominence on the home page than they had ever had before. [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
[...] many user complaints about Facebook’s new home page redesign have settled down since their initial roar a few weeks ago, there is still one place users [...]
May 4th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
[...] Facebook rolled out the new home page stream a few weeks ago, one of the most common requests from users has been to make the stream truly [...]
February 5th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Simple really.. the new look is like the french developer, lazy and disliked by millions
May 18th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I tried several times to login to my facebook homepage and I’m not getting any applicable feedback, I tried to change my password and everything its still not letting me get in please get in touch with me through my e-mail account. thanks!
July 18th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
i received a facebook solicitation from someone i knew 40 years ago. it said his other contacts were people i knew….but he could not possibly know. some of them i rarely contact and some i haven’t contacted by email in years.
how did he get these names?
is this legit?
please advise over my email address
thanks