When you log in to Facebook after creating your account your default "home" page is going to be the "News Feed". The news feed is a scrolling list of all of the items that your friends and any pages you like are sharing with you.
Elements of the Facebook News Feed
The main elements of the Facebook news feed page, as of April 2014, are:
- Navigation Area
- Post a Status Update
- The News Feed
- Events,Trends, Recommendations and Sponsored Links
At the top right of the page is your alerts, main navigation and settings area. If you receive a friend request, new message or a status update from your friends "red" alerts will pop up in this area.
The Navigation Sidebar
Hovering over items in the Favorites list and click the gear icon you can also select "Rearrange" to change the order of your favorites.
If you hover over any item in the left navigation you can choose to add it to your Favorites. A little gear icon will appear to the left of the link, click it and select "Add to Favorites".
When you browse Facebook and "Like" some of your favorite brand pages (Nike perhaps) you will see the option to filter your news feed. The "Pages Feed" item under Pages in the left navigation is that filter. If you eventually create a Facebook page, maybe for a business page, it will also show up under Pages.
Under Friends you will see all of your different lists. Close Friends, Acquaintances, your city (Baltimore in my case). These links are actually filters for your news feed.
The same holds true for Groups or Interests, clicking these links will filter the news feed for those items only.
Finally, apps is not a filter. These links will take you directly to the app center page for the selected app.
Post a Status Update
You can post a an update to your news feed for all, or some, of you friends to see. Your update can be a text post, a link, a photo or a video.
You can also tag your update with a location.
To change who can see your updates click in the area that says "Friends" and modify your post preferences. Facebook will remember these preferences so you may want to look at this area each time you post a status.
The News Feed
Below the status update is your actual news feed. As you add more friends and like more pages this feed will fill up quickly.
Facebook has enhanced the algorithms to attempt to show you the items that would most interest you personally. This means that as you engage (like, share, comment or write on a friends/pages timeline) with your friends and liked pages their status updates will show more often and higher in your news feed.
Each post in your news feed can be liked, shared with your (or your friends) timeline or you can comment directly on the post. Facebook also allows you to post a photo with a comment now.
Events,Trends, Recommendations and Sponsored Links
On the right side of your Facebook News Feed is where you will find a scrolling list of events, trending posts, and Pages that Facebook recommends for you.
Events can include events created by friends and pages you have liked. Events can also be your friends birthdays. Honestly this is one of Facebook's best features. Reminding you when your friends birthday's are coming up.
Popular posts and news from outside of Facebook will also show up in the Trending sidebar below any events.
Recommended pages are based on the pages you have already liked as well as pages that your friends may have liked. Facebook makes it easy for you to like new pages right from the news feed. Once you like a page you will see news from that page show up in your news feed in the center of this page.
Sponsored ads will also show up on the right sidebar of the news feed page. All sponsored ads will clearly be listed under the "Sponsored" banner. These ads are based on interests that you have selected first and then on other specifics that Facebook knows about your personal profile.
Let me know if this post helped you and I hope you continue to Be More Social!
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