Hey guys, welcome to Shama Tv. Today I have a really special episode for you. The e-mails have been pouring in. Facebook now has a new design. They’ve updated a lot of their features and people have been e-mailing me to show them how to do certain things and wondering where all their features went.
So that’s what we’re going to do today. I’ll tell you about the new Facebook, and how you can navigate it.
So this is what the new Facebook looks like. Don’t be scared, it’s not that different. All your stuff is still there; you just have to learn how to navigate it.
So let’s start up top because I think they’ve really made this smaller and it might be hard to see. This where it should say welcome and your name, and this is where your friend requests are and what other requests you have.
So if I click on the friend request, someone wants to be your friend, so I’ll go ahead and confirm that. There’s events invitations and a friend suggestion. So back to the home screen.
This is interesting, because remember how I’ve been talking about status updates being very important? Well they’ve really made this the key feature on their site now, in terms of the homepage. This is where the status updates go. If you guys are familiar with Twitter.com, this reminds me a lot of Twitter because you have an ongoing stream now. I’ll go ahead and click refresh and you’ll see that these changed because this is a live feed.
Before you had a choice between a live feed and kind of a static feed in which it choose which friends updates to display. This is where you’re going to see a live feed, so I’ll go ahead and type something in and we’ll see how that works. So I’m going to type in the update about what’s going on now. So I’ll type in “Shooting a video for Shama.tv showing folks how to navigate the new Facebook,” and hit share, so it immediately posted. You can also put photos, videos, and links… you can share a lot of things. Here’s the other thing, I can also go down here and comment on other people’s updates. I’m commenting on my friend Kat’s status how just created a page for her company, and I’m going to say I like it, and leave a comment for her.
You can go down and do that for multiple friends. I’m actually excited about it. I like the live feed feature. To the left you can see all your newsfeed, and you can also narrow it down by city. Here’s what’s going on with my Dallas Fort Worth friends because sometimes you just want to see what’s going on locally, so this a great place to do that. I can also look at the overall state field. If I wanted, I could create more friend lists and put friends in different lists, and just see their feeds. I haven’t done that, but you can do that as well. On the right side we have birthdays. You guys remember that this used to be pretty far down on the old Facebook, well up here, it’s right here and really easy to click on someone to wish them a happy birthday. Scroll down a little bit further and we have highlights. This is where Facebook seems to randomly pick things going on in your friends circle and then highlight them. I think the way it works is that if you have more comments, or lots of thumbs ups on your status updates it shows up here. So again, more incentive to put on good, valuable content when you do go ahead and put content here. This is really cool because I just put in an update that said “Shooting a video,” and someone responded that said, “Good idea! I just realized my homepage doesn’t show friends birthdays and I have no idea how to get that working again!” Well you see this right here, this is where the birthdays are, and if you click “see more” it’ll show you all their birthdays– upcoming birthdays as well. So this is wonderful, I think a really nice feature… people are just a little lost right now.
Now, big question: “Where did the pages go? Where did my groups go?”
Well, if you look right down here, you’ll see there is a narrow navigation bar. Here are applications, and if I click that, I can see all my recently used applications, I can see the bookmarked applications, all sorts of stuff. Plus, I can edit them, and even find more. Right next to it is groups. I can click on this to access groups recently updates, or recently joined by my friends, so this hasn’t changed-this looks the same as before. We’ve got ads and pages: this is where pages went. We can click on ads, and pages. I’m now looking at all the pages that I am an admin of. This is a really easy point of access.
Now we’ll go back down here: we’ve covered groups, we’ve covered ads and pages, and you can even access photos down here really quickly from the navigation bar. These are all the different albums that have been going up from friends across the Globe. You can also click on events, so as you can see, with this navigation bar they’ve made it really easy to access some of the most important things, which are pages, groups, pictures, and a couple of applications.
Let’s check out the profile they’ve changed slightly. Again “write something” posts things on the live feed. For example, I just posted that on the home page not too long ago, and it showed up on my profile page. This is pretty important right here: everything you’d put on the homepage, even though it lasts a few seconds or a few minutes for most people on their home screen, it does go permanently on your profile, so that’s something they’ve changed. Also, I can see Shama & friends, what they’ve said, or I can also just click on my name to see everything I’ve posted and filter out what friends have said. Or I can view just friends, and see only what friends have said. Everything else has stayed pretty much the same.
And that, guys, was your tour of the new Facebook. If you have questions, just leave them in the comment section below and I will address them.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I don’t have anyone’s birthdays showing on my page. I wonder if that means the birthdays are too far out?
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Great tutorial, Shama! Thanks for sharing!
To your success,
Kevin
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:05 am
I just started watching ShamaTV. You do an excellent job at breaking things down for people. Keep it up!
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 am
Thanks April! Welcome the Shama.Tv community. ; )
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:11 am
Welcome Kevin.
If I can support your success-I’ll consider it my success!
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 am
Hey Jennifer-
Great point. So, what I have found is that some users have lost birthdays on the right column. You can see them when you hit events on the navigation bar below and click birthdays. I know this is a few more clicks, but I think Facebook will eventually do a fix and bring them back where they are supposed to be-like shown in the video.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:18 am
Thank you so much! Now I can see the birthdays!
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 am
excellent job Shama,,
I liked the new design,, but after watching you video I liked even more :- )
the tip about building friend lists is great.. I didn’t note it before
thank you so much
Ghada
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:51 am
one more thing….
when I post a link in my profile it generates some thumbnails to choose from
in the last facebook design we had an option to not display any images
is there any tricks to do the same in the new design????
cause this option is not available anymore
thank you
Ghada
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:24 am
Hi Ghada,
Welcome!
Yes, FB now forces you to choose a thumbnail or a gray-ish icon if you don’t have an image.
They may change this aspect..but can’t be sure!
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:34 am
That’s a great tutorial but I think the status updates should just be statuses, I hate seeing 10-20 entries showing people giving people plants, flair and other things. I don’t care about that.
FB use to let you show less or more about people’s posts, then use the live feed to see everything.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Hi Shama, Thanks so much for this helpful video. I do NOT have birthdays in my upper right, AND I do not have the nav bar at the bottom you talk about. These would both be helpful. Wonder why I’m not seeing these.
Was using Google Chrome, so switched over to IE in case that was the problem — but same thing.
Maybe I’d like the new layout if I had all of the features.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Well I found my nav bar at the bottom, and found the birthdays. I’m wondering why YOURS are on the right and how you did that?
Geri
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Hi Geri,
I think this is b/c FB is still rolling out changes to ALL users. As far as I can tell, this is a glitch on their side. Eventually, all homepages will show birthdays on the top right corner. Hang in there!
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Hi Dan,
Agreed. In this sense, they are trying out the Twitter style live feed. Let’s see what happens!
March 24th, 2009 at 2:21 am
Just a smile 4 u
Reggie
March 24th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Nice job Shama.
I think those of use Twitter, aren’t as bothered with the changes. They make sense to us. Everyone needs to give it time.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Thanks Shama! The only way to advertise your business page then is to update on your personal site? I have been trying to figure out how to get fans.
March 24th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Hi Shama,
Great video! Thanks for doing this. Did FB get rid of Marketplace? Was it replaced with something different?
Thanks for the great work you do,
Chad
March 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Most of my friends hate the new interface. I love it, especially the live feed. Very nice improvement. Thanks for the tips.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Hi Shama
I watched this video, in fact first time I watched Shama.tv video. I am impressed with the content and the easy way explaining every change in FB. Great effort. Thanks.
Deepak
March 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Shama –
This is a really helpful video tutorial. Now I’m going to go into my Facebook account and see if I can find everything that you explained.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Hi Phyllis and Deepak-
Most welcome! = ) I hope you will subscribe to the blog and keep watching!
March 25th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Hi Shama – great video! How did you segment your friends under the NewsFeed (like your Dallas/FtWorth friends). Thanks!
March 25th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Hi Stephanie,
When you belong to a network, it should automatically do that for you.
This is what Facebook says on Networks:
“To join a regional network, you simply have to let us know where you live on the “Networks” tab of the Account page. Just enter your city, and we’ll show you the regional networks closest to you. You cannot change regional networks frequently, so please be sure to pick the right one to join.”
March 25th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Hi Chad,
No, FB marketplace is still live and kicking. They changed it up a bit, bit it’s still there.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Hi Diane,
Not at all. You can definitely setup a fun fan page. You can invite your friends to be fans…you can also ask clients, colleagues, and readers to join.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 am
Thanks for the tip!!!
April 30th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Hey Shama,
My facebook navigation bars are invisible. Probably a setting on my computer. Any idea on how I fix that. When I put the cursor over them they pop up in black text but otherwise I don’t see them. What the heck did I do?
April 19th, 2010 at 11:11 am
I want to learn how to add a new picture to my profile, also add new album pic’s and do things around facebook where do I go for instructions on how to do these things.