3 Tips for Customizing the New Facebook Home Page
With the new “real time” stream on Facebook’s redesigned home page, Facebook is relying less on its ability to algorithmically select interesting content for users and more on users’ abilities to group and categorize their friends to create the most interesting stream. Here are a couple quick tips for customizing it the new Facebook home page to make it work better for you:
1) Hide friends whose updates you don’t want to see.
The easiest way to get started is to hide friends from the News Feed. You’ll no longer see any shared content from friends you hide.
2) Group friends into Friend Lists and use them to filter your feed.
The next step is to group friends into what Facebook calls “Friend Lists.” Friend Lists are private friend groups that no one ever sees but that you can use for privacy – for example, sharing personal content (like photos) with only some of your Facebook friends. You can also use them to create filtered views on the home page stream so that you only see updates from certain types of friends – like “Best Friends,” “Work Friends,” “High School,” etc.
To create Friend Lists, go to the Friends tab and click “Make a New List” on the left side of the page.
3) Change your default home page filter.
You can change the default stream you see on the home page by dragging a friend list or network filter above “News Feed” on the left. Most people don’t know that this is possible, but it’s a powerful feature once you’ve created a friend list you like using a lot.
Now, you’ll only see updates from “Best Friends” (or whichever list you prefer seeing most often) when you load the home page.
You can only currently use friend lists and networks as your default News Feed filter – not applications. However, you can still rearrange applications in the section below friend lists and networks in order to put your favorite ones on top.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Awesome, that new default group is the killer tip!!!!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
great post, get listed!!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
It’s insane that the newsfeed can’t be filtered based on content. Every time I see the results of a “quiz,” I want to punch myself.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
That is exactly what I have already set up. It would be great if Twitter gave us such filtering tools.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Definitely need to share this to the newsfeed as since the homepage was upgraded I have noticed that I have been consistantly losing friends. I believe it’s due to the noise I generate through sharing content and importing through Facebook! :)
March 20th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
This is a sad attempt of what it was before.
I hope they bring back the previews Live-Feed.
Now we have to get everything, or miss everything from a friend.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Joe, great idea, what better place to share it!
And Jan, I think the beauty of Twitter lies in its simplicity and hope that doesn’t change.
There are so many apps for filtering and grouping, I use Tweetdeck as the groups feature on there is very powerful and has allowed me to follow more while not missing my close friends’ tweets as well as topics of special interest to me.
Off to reorganise my FB home page, thanks Justin!
March 21st, 2009 at 3:24 am
Nice tips given, thanks!! ^@^
March 21st, 2009 at 4:43 am
Thanks for these tips. Can’t wait to create lists to segment family, friends, work associates, etc. – so helpful.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:09 am
[...] across some tips on how to customize the new facebook layout. Might as well try to get the most of it until it changes [...]
March 21st, 2009 at 7:36 am
[...] are some very useful tips about how to customise the new Facebook. I’ve already done it – I have some FB friends whose [...]
March 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am
Great post. Very helpful. Have linked back to it on my blog. Thank you.
March 21st, 2009 at 10:22 am
nice tips, thanks.
another good tip for people sick of seeing quiz results and other silly apps clogging up their facebook homepage is Facebook Purity : http://tinyurl.com/fbpurity
its a greasemonkey script for firefox, that filters out all messages from 3rd party applications
March 21st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Great tips. Thanks.
However, I worry that Facebook will screw up eventually and make my private Friend Lists public. And there isn’t anything real time about the “real time” feed… I thought we were going to get a scroll that would update continuously.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Great instruction. I haven’t taken the time to see if any of these notes were on my bottom menu but catching Sue Tirittili’s link to this post in my news feed make it real basic. Just the way I like it. Smart-Savvy!
LaRon | @laroncarter
March 21st, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Sounds like more of a primer for new Friendfeed users but agree, simply can’t ignore the FB community anymore. It’s huge and these are great tips
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:00 am
[...] 3 Tips for Customizing the New Facebook Home Page With the new “real time” stream on Facebook’s redesigned home page, Facebook is relying less on its ability to algorithmically select interesting content for users and more on users’ abilities to group and categorize their friends to create the most interesting stream. Here are a couple quick tips for customizing it the new Facebook home page to make it work better for you: (tags: social+media tips usability customize) [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 am
[...] * Extracted from Inside Facebook. [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 am
[...] One of the most talked about new features is the ‘real time’ stream on the News Feed and the fact that users can now determine which of their friend’s feed appear in their news feed by hiding friends and creating groups. More on this from Inside Facebook. [...]
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 am
I use the friend groups a lot and really like that feature. I just wish the old Livefeed was still an option. That is where I saw a lot of what my friends posted.
It was all in one place and I didn’t have to go looking around in different friend groups.
Maybe it was just me.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Love this; we hear some people that dislike the new FB. I am glad I read this; will definitely come in handy once I apply the tips.
Keep them coming
March 24th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Thanks for the great tips! I’m always learning new things and passing it along to my peeps.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Thanks 4 d tips!! Give me more..
March 28th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Cant seem to place my pals list above the news feed. It switches back every time I refresh. Boo, because this is the best tip yet
March 31st, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Very helpful! Thanks for sharing this!
April 11th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
[...] Here is another link that might intrest some of you: 3 tips for customizing the new Facebook home page. [...]
September 10th, 2009 at 8:42 am
hello
i want to customize my link on facebook as
http://www.facebook.com/vanhaicollection
how to customize ?
some one help me
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
These are great tips – I will certainly be using the “friends only” list for my home page.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
great post.
I am looking for tutorial to change theme permanent on facebook. Is there any tutorial about it?
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:31 am
Now this is old. Please update quick.
April 26th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
1) Hide friends whose updates you don’t want to see.
The easiest way to get started is to hide friends from the News Feed. You’ll no longer see any shared content from friends you hide.
How do I undo that step so that I can unhide the News Feed of some of my friends?
May 8th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
[...] Australian colleague have in common? I reckon not a whole lot, except knowing me. I suspect many have already hidden me because of lacking relevance to their [...]
May 10th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I want to put in a section called “grandchildren and great grandchildren” but I do not know how to do this
September 28th, 2010 at 8:06 am
hello
i have been to creat fanpage : namtrip travel .
how to change it name ???