By Melody Harstine, goodmedia communications staff writer

During my evening Facebook browsing routine, I refreshed the page, only to find a whole new Facebook staring back at me. It’s my job to stay tuned into what’s going on in the social media realm, so I knew the change was coming — thanks to this article on Mashable — I just wasn’t expecting it until the end of the week.

The sudden change certainly caught me by surprise, and my initial response was less than positive. I like to think I typically handle changes in life well, and with every Facebook revision, I have adapted easily and fairly painlessly. I expect no less from this change, although there are some pretty significant differences.

I’m not one to subscribe to the mindset that the powers that be at Facebook are out to make my life difficult. After all, without Facebook, I wouldn’t be able to follow the updates from a friend who is in the hospital having her first baby, and I certainly wouldn’t be privy to the numerous (and often ridiculous) musings of my friends, coworkers and former classmates.

Before you get your panties in a wad over the revamp of your Facebook Newsfeed, let me point out a few key features of the makeover.

Real-Time Ticker — On the right-hand side of your Newsfeed, you’ll notice a ticker that displays your friends’ Facebook activity in real-time. At one point, the Facebook Newsfeed was thought to update in real-time, but the reality is that it updated based on an algorithm that determined what news might be important to you (based on your own activity, what profiles you look at most and who you talk to frequently).  I for one didn’t always appreciate Facebook’s attempt to tell me what I should find important, as I often missed posts that I actually do consider important (like the fact that my soon-to-be-mommy friend was headed into the hospital — a status update I didn’t see until 20 hours after she posted it!) The ticker doesn’t take up much real estate in your browser, so if you want to see more details of any post in the real-time ticker, simply hover your mouse over that particular tidbit, and a bigger, more detailed post will appear.

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Subscriptions — It’s finally our turn to tell Facebook what is important to us, and see posts in our Newsfeed that reflect that. Hover over any post in your Newsfeed, and on the top right of that post you’ll see an arrow leading to a drop down, which allows you to subscribe to your friends’ posts based on the frequency with which you want to see their updates in your feed.  If you want to see all posts from any friend, you have that option. There is also an option to show only “important” posts, I’m a bit more wary of this, as I’m not entirely convinced of Facebook’s ability to determine what I think is important. When you hover over a post, on the top left, there is a small blue tab in the corner, which allows you to mark that story as a “Top Story.” This simply means Facebook will put more posts like that in the top of your Feed.  These options don’t exist for Pages you “Like.” However, the same options to hide updates from particular pages still exists, simply hover over an update from a Page.

Top Posts and Recent Posts — At the top of your Newsfeed, you’ll see a handful of posts Facebook has determined to be “Top Stories.” These posts are likely based on a similar algorithm as the old Newsfeed. Below those posts is a feed of “Recent Stories,” which are also based on the algorithm, but posts Facebook deems less important, and appear in chronological order. The Top Posts/Recent Posts feature isn’t all that new, it’s just displayed differently. Before the revamp, you could toggle back and forth between Top Posts and Recent Posts, now they’re merged into one feed.

Larger Photos — Not a life-changing difference, but a positive one. Photos are displayed in a larger format than the previous Newsfeed layout. Why unnecessarily strain your eyes, right?

As I’m writing this, the revamped Newsfeed is less than an hour old. I expect to make new discoveries as I spend more time with the new design, but these are a few of my first impressions of the new layout. If you have questions about how to navigate the new Facebook Newsfeed, leave us a note on our Facebook Page and we’ll guide you through it.

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