Surprise, People Loathe The New Facebook Changes

If Facebook rolled out a new feature that spit gold coins out of your USB port every time you liked a status, people would bitch about it. Many of the changes Facebook has made over the years that initially drew the ire of nearly everyone have come to be indelible parts of the social experience. Remember, guys – that News Feed that you are now ready to slaughter people over didn’t exist at one point. I’m sure there were more than a few “What the hell is this stupid crap”s when that originally rolled out.

In short, people hate change and have a predisposition to slam anything Facebook does within a minute of being exposed to it. Of course, that’s not to say that the anger isn’t oftentimes warranted.

So it’s not surprising that I thought the apocalypse was upon us when I woke up yesterday and jumped on the internet. There are a lot of people that are quite perturbed with the Facebook News Feed changes.

What do you think about the new changes to Facebook? Do you like the new News Feed and the ticker? Do you feel overwhelmed or confused? How does this update to Facebook compare to previous changes? Let us know what you think.

To briefly sum it up, here’s what Facebook had to say about the changes:

When you pick up a newspaper after not reading it for a week, the front page quickly clues you into the most interesting stories. In the past, News Feed hasn’t worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it’s tough to zero in on what matters most.

Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. They’re marked with an easy-to-spot blue corner.

They have basically joined the “top news” and “most recent” tabs that were the options before the change into one stream that features real time updates as well as top news, determined by Facebook’s algorithm for what it thinks you want to see.

And then there is that ticker. In the top right of the new layout, Facebook has added a ticker that supposedly contains everything – status updates, likes, comments, photos, information changes, etc – all in real-time, so that you don’t miss anything.

OK. It’s definitely different. Let’s look at what some of my friends have had to say about the changes –

Hey! Just when I was thinking about dumping Google+, all this happens. Procrastination pays.

ok i gotta agree with everyone else…what is up w/ fb?! i don’t need to know what everyone is doing every second they are on fb!!!!!

Thinks Facebook has gone mad with all these new options, instead of making things easier, it appears to me they are making things more difficult, what say you????

screw u facebook, have we not all hated ur changes everytime for the last 8 years or what now?

Gahhhhh. Whatever, Facebook, Purchase World of Warcraft Gold.

Facebook really needs to stop trying to figure out what I consider “important” information….

#NewFacebook has been a trending topic on Twitter since the changes rolled out, and most of the tweets are negative –

It’s obvious that the backlash is pretty severe. Warning, this is where I move into the opinion part of the article. Proceed at your own risk.

It’s not the end of the world. But there are some rather annoying elements to the new design.

That ticker…could be called the OCD feed or perhaps the “who gives a shit” feed. Honestly – too much information. And not too much relevant information, which would still be a problem, but too much information I simply don’t care about. It’s noble to try and put everything that happens in my Facebook world out there for me to see, but it ends up being somewhat of a headache inducer.

No, Facebook. I don’t care that a girl that I haven’t talked to since high school liked a photo of some guy that I don’t know’s trip to the Grand Canyon. I can definitely see how the ticker will have some fans, because it truly contains everything. For a person with a large amount of friends, however, this ticker could prove to be too much, too fast.

Not to mention the stalker-implications of the ticker. It let’s/makes you monitor everything that is going on with a person – every comment that my friends make on a public status or photo, every like they make, etc. Not that we didn’t get some of this with the old news feed, but the ticker takes it to an extreme

The ticker is keeping some semblance of privacy, however, as I haven’t spotted a situation yet where I’m being notified about a comment posted by my friend to a wall or status of someone who’s not my friend (unless that post was originally on my friend’s wall).

The new News Feed, like I mentioned before, is a mixture of top stories and recent stories. If you haven’t checked Facebook in a little while, it will refresh you with what’s been going on while you were gone with the “Top Stories” from X minutes ago. So far, Facebook has been pretty good with putting posts from people that I actually care about in this “Top Stories” section.

Others people here have said the opposite, claiming that their “Top Stories” have been from people they haven’t interacted with in years.

For me at least, the news feed isn’t that huge of a change. Except for the new categories labeling things as “recent stories” “top stories” and “from earlier today,” it looks quite similar to how it looked pre-changes. I still seem to be getting updates from the people I am used to getting updates from.

Not that this really bothers me, but I noticed earlier that the simple addition of the ticker and “people to subscribe to” box (a previous addition) has cluttered up Facebook a whole hell of a lot. Load up that chat box and you have this, which might be a nightmare to some users –

My mom will be calling me any time now…

Like most changes that Facebook drops on its 750 million users, I feel that this will simply become an accepted reality soon enough. Today, Facebook’s f8 conference kicks off. There, Facebook is expected to announce more new features coming to the Facebook platform. Check back with WebProNews for updates throughout the day.

What do you guys think? Love it? Hate it? Do you feel like jumping to Google+, now that it’s open to everyone? Let us know in the comments.