Earlier this week, Facebook promised a number of changes to appease user concerns about the latest homepage re-design. Users have been noticing these improvements being pushed live to their homepage over the last day or so, and this morning, I finally got them enabled on my account.
After doing a bit of tweaking, I’m definitely enjoying my Facebook homepage more than I was the past couple weeks with version 1 of the redesign. I thought I’d share with you a few of these tweaks – designed primarily to reduce information overload – so you can try them on your own account, unless of course you’re happy with the new, new Facebook as-is.
Custom Friend Lists
This problem probably only applies to those of us that add hundreds of friends, but let’s face it, if you’re reading this article, that’s probably you! I’ve always used Facebook’s custom friend lists, but now, since they’re front and center, it’s time to really take advantage of them.
What I’ve done is create lists for “People I Know” (folks I could actually identify if I ran into them walking down the street), as well as “Colleagues,” “Close Friends,” and “High School,” which, should be self-explanatory. You can create new lists from the “Create” link at the bottom of your list of friend groups on the left side of the Facebook homepage.
One thing you can do – which isn’t immediately obvious, is make any of these groups your default, so it’s what comes up every time you open Facebook. To do that, just drag the list you want as default to the top of the list of groups on the left of your homepage.
If you don’t do this, Facebook will just default to “News Feed,” which shows updates from everyone you’re friends with.
Tweaking These Lists
With the newest rollout, Facebook has also made it easy to tweak these lists at any time. To do so, just click the little icon next to the Group name, select the list you’d like to add someone to, and then start typing in their name. Facebook auto-detects who you might be trying to add. You can do all of this without leaving the page.
Hiding Application Notifications
One common complaint with the new Facebook (
) was the influx of information from third-party apps like Flickr (), YouTube (), and Last.fm, ala Friendfeed (). With the homepage improvements, you can now hide not only people from your feed, but specific application alerts as well.
In this example, I’ve decided to hide alerts from Last.fm, so I no longer see the songs that my friends are loving:
Other Improvements
Facebook has also moved “Requests” back to the top right of your homepage. This creates more real estate for friend updates above the fold, which is pretty nice once you’ve tweaked the other settings.
Still Missing
What’s still missing from my homepage are updates featuring photos that my friends have been tagged in (though some of these show up in “Highlights” on the right), as well as the promised “live updating” that will restore the functionality people miss from the former Live Feed feature. These are both in the works and expected to launch in the next few weeks.