Chapter 3
In This Chapter
Understanding how each part of your news feed works
Managing your ticker
Curating your timeline
Facebook has many features, including the news feed, your personal timeline, and business pages. Each offers a different way to view or access content. This chapter explains how the two most prominent pages — your news feed and personal timeline — work.
In this chapter, we share some screen shots of the news feed and personal timeline and explain the main elements of each. Both the news feed and timeline have a lot of functionality. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!
Your Facebook news feed is your main Facebook page. (We sometimes refer to the main Facebook page as your Facebook home page.) You see it every time you log in, and it’s where you find the most functionality for interacting on Facebook. Your timeline is important too because it’s where you archive your content, but your news feed is where you’ll spend most of your time.
We explain the news feed page in terms of five main parts: top navigation, left navigation, your main news feed, right navigation, and the ticker and chat panes (see Figure 3-1). Each of these parts has important functionality. The following sections explain how you can use them to get the most out of your Facebook experience.
The top navigation on your news feed page consists of a blue toolbar. The elements on the toolbar, from left to right, are as follows:
The top navigation toolbar is static and appears on every page. It’s a handy way to quickly navigate Facebook.
The left sidebar of your news feed page houses links to your timeline, favorites, groups, friend lists, apps, pages, and interest lists. Because you use this navigation quite a bit, Facebook allows you to customize it to make it fit your habits. For instance, if you find that you visit a particular Facebook group quite a bit, you can move that group to your Favorites list so it’s readily available at the top of your navigation list. In the next few sections, we explain each of the main navigation choices and provide instructions on moving an item to your favorites list.
At the top of the left navigation, you see your profile picture and your name. When you click either item, you go directly to your timeline. Later in this chapter, we explain the features of your timeline and how to use them to interact with your friends and colleagues.
By default, the Favorites list contains links to your news feed, messages, photos, and events. You may or may not see a link labeled Find Friends (if you’re new to Facebook, you’ll probably see this option). The Favorites list is handy because you can keep all the groups and lists you use the most in one place for easy access. (See Book II, Chapter 5 for information on using Facebook groups and Chapter 4 of this minibook for help creating lists.)
To move an item to your Favorites list, follow these steps:
The item appears in the Favorites list.
To remove an item from your Favorites list, move your cursor over the item you want to remove, click the pencil icon, and choose Remove from the menu. The item moves back to its original place in the navigation. For instance, if you remove a group from your Favorites list, you can still find it under the Groups heading.
The Groups option won’t appear in your left navigation unless you’re part of one or more Facebook groups. We explain how you can connect with others through groups in Book II, Chapter 5. When you start participating in a Facebook group, the title of that group appears in the Groups section of the left navigation. You can click the title of a group to find its latest updates.
In Chapter 4 of this minibook, we explain why lists are useful and how to create one (or several). Because the news feed is ever changing, it’s easy to miss updates from people who interest you. Facebook tries to guess what you’re most interested in (by using an algorithm — see Book V, Chapter 3), but it doesn’t always get it right. Creating lists to organize your friends as well as pages and people you follow helps you quickly see recent updates by specific people. For example, we have lists for local friends, high school friends, blogs, Facebook marketing pages, blogging buddies, and family. When you click the title of each list, your news feed switches from displaying the most recent updates or top stories updates of everyone with whom you’re connected to showing updates from the people you included in a particular list. We find we don’t miss as many updates from important people when we use lists.
The Apps and Pages headers list the applications you have associated with your Facebook account and the business pages you administer, respectively. Both seem to list apps or business pages based on how often you use an app or visit a business page. In addition, the order of a list may change depending on what page you are viewing (for example, the news feed versus a group page).
You can update your status right from your news feed. At the top of the middle section of the page, you see options for Update Status and Add Photos/Video. Just click the one you want to use, and share what’s on your mind.
The main part of your news feed page is in the center of the page. This is where you see updates from your Facebook friends, groups, people you follow, and business pages you’ve Liked.
Your news feed is made up of the following:
As you can see in Figure 3-2, you can sort your news feed between top stories and most recent. Facebook uses an algorithm to try to determine your affinity for each person and page with which you’re associated on Facebook — sometimes the algorithm is right, sometimes it’s wrong. (Read more about the news feed algorithm and other Facebook analytics in Book V, Chapter 3.
Both top stories and most recent stories can include updates from friends, people you follow, groups, apps, and business pages. Updates from people you haven’t interacted with regularly are shown in the ticker in the right sidebar. (We get to the ticker later in this chapter.)
If you want to remove a story from your news feed, hover your cursor over the story until you see an arrow at the top right. Click the arrow to display the menu shown in Figure 3-3, and then choose I Don’t Want to See This.
After choosing this option you see some or all of the following choices:
When you post your own status updates, or share photos, videos, or links, they appear in the news feeds of your followers and friends (unless you’ve applied a privacy setting to those updates; we explain how to do that in Book II, Chapter 2). As you can imagine, you should be careful about what you post because it’s likely that many others will see it. (If you have questions about your Facebook privacy, see Chapter 4 of this minibook.)
Facebook tends to roll out changes here and there, and the right sidebar is where things sometimes jump around a bit. By the time you read this, the right sidebar may have changed yet again.
If your chat feature is off, you'll see your ticker in the top of the right sidebar. (We describe the ticker in the next section.) Below the ticker, you have application alerts — usually about upcoming birthdays and events (see Book II, Chapter 7 for more about Facebook events). When you click the birthday person’s name, the Today’s Birthdays window pops up and provides a place for you to write a quick note to your friend, which is automatically posted to his or her timeline, and buy your friend a gift. Similarly, if you click the name of an upcoming event, the Event pop-up appears and gives an overview of the event, complete with a link to the event page and the option to RSVP to the event.
Under application alerts, you can see sponsored stories. Sponsored stories are a type of advertisement that relies on showing you which of your friends have interacted with a company or its business page recently. Sometimes Facebook swaps the sponsored stories area and the ticker, so what you see may be different from what others see.
The right sidebar changes depending on the type of Facebook page you’re viewing. Following is a discussion of the basic options you’re likely to see on specific types of pages:
The ticker and chat panes appear at the far right of your Facebook page. The ticker displays updates in real time from your friends, groups, and business pages you follow. Whereas your news feed focuses on displaying content from the people and business pages with which you interact most, the ticker is a running stream of what everyone is doing, whether you regularly interact with them or not.
Chat is texting in real time with someone in Facebook. Chats aren’t broadcast through your news feed, ticker, or timeline; they are private. We explain chat in more detail in Book II, Chapter 8.
To hide the ticker and chat panes, click the Hide sidebar icon, as shown in Figure 3-4. The chat panel collapses. If you're on the home page, the ticker moves to the right sidebar; otherwise, you don't see the ticker.
As Facebook rolls out more activity applications, you’ll see those updates in your ticker. Activity applications are the way Facebook wants you to interact with others. Facebook’s take is that you’re out there living life, and you want a more robust way to share what you’re doing. Instead of just Liking a book, you can share that you’ve read the book. Or you can share that you hiked a trail, watched a movie, or played a game.
If you notice something come through your ticker and want to see more about it, move your cursor over the update, and an expanded view appears. You see the status update and any comments to the status, and you can Like or comment on the status yourself.
Your personal timeline is a record of all the content you’ve shared throughout your time on Facebook. It’s been referred to as a digital scrapbook, and that’s fairly accurate. But if you’re not the crafty type or not into scrapbooking, don’t let that moniker deter you. Your timeline is simply a way to organize your Facebook interactions.
You can highlight important events in your life (Facebook calls these milestones), hide updates, or add events after the fact. For instance, maybe you took your first trip to Europe years before you joined Facebook. With timeline, you can create a new update that appears in the correct chronological spot in your timeline. The update can include pictures, music you listened to while traveling, your own travel notes, a map of your travels, and more. When you’ve created the new event (or story), you can feature it so others can have a complete picture of your experience — or you can relive the experience yourself.
The timeline has many features you can use to control how you share your content with others — even after you’ve already shared via the news feed. First, though, you need to know how to find your timeline. After you log in to Facebook, click anywhere you see your name (in the left sidebar navigation, or the top blue navigation toolbar, or in comments you leave). Your timeline appears, similar to the one shown in Figure 3-6.
As you can see from Figure 3-6, the timeline is all about the visual splash! Following is a rundown of each item on your timeline:
It’s handy to know that the cover image is 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high, so you can edit the photo before you upload it. You can use a picture that’s smaller than 851 x 315, but Facebook stretches the photo to fit, so it may be distorted.
In the default activity log view, you see all your activity. For other views, choose from one of the options in the left sidebar. For example, you can view activity related only to photos, Likes, or games.
Because the timeline makes it easy to find current and past status updates, it’s a good idea to review your activity log and check the permissions on previous stories. You may want to hide some of those party pictures from your colleagues.
To display or hide any section, click the pencil icon in that particular section and choose Manage Sections. A lightbox appears. To remove activity or change settings, click the section name (such as Instagram). For sections such as TV Shows, you can click the plus sign to see recommended shows to add to the section or type the names of TV shows in the search box that you’d like to add.
From here, everyone’s timeline will look different. You might see sections with apps you’ve used, pages you’ve Liked, games you’ve played, or TV shows and movies you've added.
The right side of your timeline contains all your posts, most recent first, as well as items in which you’ve been tagged. To see past updates, scroll down or click the date to jump to a specific year.
As you scroll, your cover photo is replaced with drop-down menus that take you to your timeline or certain years. You can post a status update, a photo, a place, or a life event. Continue scrolling and you’ll see that the updates continue to load until you get a few weeks or months into the past.
Facebook then shows you Earlier in that year and gives you the option to choose between seeing Highlights or All Stories. The left side now displays what was added to your timeline during this period. For instance, Scott can see that in 2013 he added 113 friends and Liked a total of 658 pages. On the right he can continue to see stories posted to his timeline as he scrolls.
If you choose Highlights, Facebook displays any stories you've chosen to highlight as well as stories you posted that were popular. You'll see a range of post dates and an option to see more posts from that date range. If you choose All Stories, every story posted on your timeline will appear.
Each status update has a pencil icon in the upper right. Click that icon to change the date, add a location, highlight the post, or hide that update from the timeline. If the update is from an app such as Instagram, you see additional options, such as Show on Timeline, Allow on Timeline, and Hide from Timeline. You can delete the update or mark it as spam. For photos you upload to your timeline, you see options to edit the album containing the photo and to reposition the photo.
These tools allow you to have complete control over how you share previous updates and content with others.
To hide a story from your timeline, you can visit your activity log or your main timeline.
In your activity log, search for the story by clicking the correct month or year. When you find the story you want to edit, click the pencil on the far right to display the menu shown in Figure 3-8, and choose Hidden from Timeline.
To hide a story from your main timeline, move your cursor over the story. When the pencil icon appears, click it to display a menu and then choose Hide from Timeline.
You can reinstate any story by returning to the activity log and choosing Allowed on Timeline.
You add updates, photos, and events to a past date in the Status box. Facebook lets you choose the year, month, day, and even the time of day for the update.
The timeline is a chronological representation of the content you’ve shared with others, but it can be more than that. You can create a multimedia profile of your major life events to share with friends, family, and others. You can add photos, videos, and comments by year — even for the years before Facebook was around. You can start with the year you were born and go from there, or you can start at any point you like — you have that control.