If you don’t view your Facebook home page using “LIVE FEED”, you are missing out on much of the Facebook experience. At the top of your home page you will see one of the following and you can toggle back and forth between News Feed and Live Feed.
If this is what you see…you are looking at the News Feed view of your home page:
If this is what you see…you are looking at the Live Feed view:
Below is an overview of some of the “views” you have available to you and why I prefer the LIVE FEED:
NEWS FEED View: A Limited View Based on a Facebook Algorithm
If you only look at the News Feed view of your home page, you will see what Facebook thinks is most popular from your friends and pages that you are a fan of. Facebook uses an algorithm to figure out what is most popular or interesting and frankly I don’t like their algorithm and have heard from many people that don’t!
Posts made by Pages you are a Fan of will only appear in your News Feed if Facebook thinks the post is interesting. Therefore you will miss most, if not all, of the posts from Fan Pages that you actually want to follow. You will also miss a lot of what your friends share on Facebook!
The items in your News Feed are NOT in chronological order which seems very bazaar to me!
LIVE FEED View: A Real-Time, Up-to-Date View of What Your Friends & Pages Are Sharing
If you toggle over to the Live Feed view, you will see everything that is posted by your friends and Pages you are a Fan of. (The LIVE FEED is most similar to what you used to see on your home page prior to the recent Facebook changes.) In the Live Feed view, you will also see info that used to be in the highlights section on the right side of your screen. Plus, a few other things which you may or may not want to see.
Remember, if you don’t use the Live Feed view you will miss out on a lot of the posts that are made by your friends and Pages you are a Fan of!
STATUS UPDATES View: Extremely Limited View…You Are Missing A LOT!
If you click on the filter that says “Status Updates” on the left side of your home page…your view of the home page will temporarily change so that you see only Status Updates from your friends. You will NOT see any links, photos or videos that your friends share. You also will NOT see Status Updates or posts from Pages you are a Fan of.
Other Available Views:
There are also filters on the left side of your home page that you can use to view only photos or links or videos or pages, etc… I personally only use these filters, and the Status Updates filter, if I am trying to find something that I saw a few hours or a day or so ago.
My Conclusion/Decision:
I prefer the home page view I saw before Facebook made their recent changes. However, since I have to adjust to the changes, I use the LIVE FEED view so that I can see everything I truly want to see from my friends and Pages I am a Fan of. I just scroll quickly past things that I don’t care as much about like games, who commented on what, who became friends with who or who got tagged in a photo. (Most of the time I even “block” game & quiz applications so I can get through my Live Feed faster.)
In actuality, the new home page resembles the home page that existed prior to March of 2009. Many of its features were brought back because Facebook members didn’t like the changes they made in March. I think there must be a happy medium somewhere! What do you think?
Please “share” this blog post if you are on Facebook or retweet it in Twitter, etc…to help spread this info about filters and home page viewing options!
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Become a Fan of my Facebook Fan Page and feel free to join the conversation 
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PLEASE HELP??? For some reason when I went to change my profile picture I now have two (2) facebook home pages. I desperately want to get rid of the one of the man & woman sitting at a table and Keep the orginal one of a man and woman dancing. Two different profile pages are killing me! I keep getting request from my facebook orginal page of friends asking to be friends. Can you please delete the profile page of the man & woman sitting at a table and let me keep the other (first one I had) one,with out me losing all of my friends and having to start all over again! PLEASE HELP ME? Gloria Gabel
Hi Gloria – The only way you could have 2 Facebook personal pages/profiles is if you created 2 Facebook accounts AND each account used a different email address for logging in. IF you find that this is the situation you have, you will need to login to the account that you want to get rid of and then follow the instructions at deactivate-reactivate-or-delete-facebook-account for EITHER deactivating or deleting your account. – Kimberly
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