Change. No one likes it. There are a lot of complaints on the social feeds today about the new features on Facebook. Every 6 month or so our News Feed fills up with “I hate this new layout” and “I’m gonna stop using Facebook if they keep changing it” (like that will ever happen). However, if you take a couple minutes to figure these features out it you will see that they are actually very useful. So don’t fret, we have put together a quick and easy guide to understanding these new features.
Ticker & Chat: The new ticker on the top right of your homepage shows real-time posts making them easier to go through. Just hover over any story to see entire update. Additionally by clicking your chat sidebar the ticker attaches to the top. You can chat while navigating to any page you like while watching your friend’s status updates change.

Photo Layout: You probably noticed the creative way our pictures are now laid out in our News Feed. This is purely for our viewing experience and gives business pages a more unique way to attract “likes”.

Top Stories: Facebook’s new concept shows posts that you will most likely find interesting and puts them at the top of your feed when you first log in. The top stories are marked by a blue tag on the top left corner of the post. To remove them from your top stories just click on the blue tag and they will be removed. To add a top story that you are interested in just hover over an update where the blue tab would be and click-it’s that easy!

Friend Lists: Facebook’s new “Smart Lists” are just that-Smart. Smart lists automatically create lists for your city, work, family, and school. You can add friends or brands you follow to the lists Facebook automatically created for you, or you can create a new list to organize your friends even better. To create a new list or edit an existing list click on “Lists” on the left of your News Feed.
Here you can see a list I created based on my favorite movies and television shows making it easy for me to skip all the news feed and go straight to my shows.

Friend List Dropdown: You can also organize your friend into lists right from their profile page.

Subscribe: The subscribe button allows you to hear from people that you are interested in, even if you’re not friends. You are automatically subscribed to all your current friends updates and with the subscribe button you can choose which of their updates you see. For example, if you have a friend who is always playing Facebook games (we all have those friends), you can hide all those game posts in a simple step.

Not all profiles have a Subscribe button. Only people who allow subscribers will have the Subscribe button on their profile. If you choose to allow Subscribers they will only see the things you share publicly.

What do you think of all these new features? Love it or hate it?