This post could also be titled: How To Make Your Feeds Useful Again!
It’s easy to become frustrated with the clutter on the Facebook live feed page and quickly write it off as worthless. This especially impacts users that have more than a couple hundred highly active friends. However with a couple tweaks you can turn the Live Feed into a very close approximation of the old (and highly useful) Facebook News Feed. Even better is, with a simple easy clicks, you can enable or disable the changes your about to make, and see anything you feel you may have been missing.
Individuals working in social media or network marketing are especially impacted by this problem as you tend to reach the 5000 friends capacity very easily! Scrolling through a list of “so and so became friends with so and so”, twenty times because that friend is a busy person, is not at all enjoyable!
The changes were made in late October 2009 by Facebook and created a separation between the News Feed and the Live Feed. Besides videos, links, shares and statuses that friends may post, the Live Feed contains “Attending”/”Attended” messages, “Became a Fan of” messages, “Joined the Group” messages, and “Now Friends with” messages. (This change, and this fix, also affects the list-feeds you may have.) The News Feed is no longer what it was, but has instead became a slightly larger (but by default limited to not show everything) version of the old Highlights column that used to grace the right side of your Facebook homepage.
Okay, okay, I hear you shout! So how do I fix it! The best method I’ve found so far to fix the live news feed on Facebook is this:
Steps:
- Install (or Open) the Firefox browser. If you don’t already have it, you can get it here: http://www.getfirefox.com Default installation is fine
- Get the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 Click the Add to Firefox Button, then the Install button. It will prompt you to restart Firefox. Please Restart.
- Get your choice of UserScript here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 Use the Install button and the click install in the popup box.You have a couple options with these Facebook Greasemonkey Scripts:
- You can install the script “as-is” which will block “Attending,” “Attended,” “Became Fan,” “Joined Group,” and “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds
- Or: From the links on that page (four of them), you can install the selective scripts. I suggest you get all four selective scripts for flexibility later.
- Remove “Attending” and “Attended” Messages from Facebook Feeds (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61157)
- Remove “Became a Fan” Messages from Facebook Feeds (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61158)
- Remove “Joined the Group” Messages from Facebook Feeds (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61159)
- Remove “Now Friends” Messages from Facebook Feeds (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/61160)
- Alternatively: Get the “Facebook Purity” script from: http://steeev.freehostia.com/wp/2009/03/19/facebook_purity_cleans_up_the_facebook_homepage/ which blocks not only those four categories but also a large percentage of the application and quiz messages. Purity is useful for blocking quizzes and ap data, but it doesn’t give me the selective control that I personally prefer.
Now, either open Facebook in Firefox – or – if it’s already open, be sure to refresh the page. If it didn’t open there by default, click over to the Live feed and you should now see it a LOT cleaner.
Any time you wish to temporarily disable these Facebook Greasemonkey scripts, simply go to the monkey-face icon in your bottom Firefox bar (that’s Greasemonkey’s icon) and right click. That opens the popup menu. Uncheck to deactivate, Check to activate. Simple as that.
That’s all there is to it! Happy Facebooking my friends!
Kimberly
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Kimberly! Great post! For some reason I have been hesitant to download Firefox and give up Internet Explorer. Thanks for sharing this information. It is helping me to get over my fear of Firefox.
I look forward to some more posts that will help me to let go of Internet Explorer.
Melissa
My recent post Be the CHANGE you want to SEE
Definitely don't be afraid of Firefox. In a variety of cases, and especially with some of the add-ons you can get, its safer to use (aka less viruses) than Internet Explorer. Feel free to ask me questions you may have about it. Its definitely nothing to be hesitant about, but is a habit to shift.
I should note in that post that there is NO reason to have the selective options enabled at the same time Purity is enabled. I had just downloaded Purity again for the screenshot and it was enabled by default.
My recent post How to Fix the Facebook Livefeed
Definitely don't be afraid of Firefox. In a variety of cases, and especially with some of the add-ons you can get, its safer to use (aka less viruses) than Internet Explorer. Feel free to ask me questions you may have about it. Its definitely nothing to be hesitant about, but is a habit to shift.
I should note in that post that there is NO reason to have the selective options enabled at the same time Purity is enabled. I had just downloaded Purity again for the screenshot and it was enabled by default.
My recent post How to Fix the Facebook Livefeed
Hi Kimberly, Nice post. Some very helpful tips here. I know for me when Facebook made its changes awhile back it created a lot of confusion and frustration. It's good to know that there is a way to clean this up and make it more useful for quick scans of what is going on.
An interesting comment about Firefox. Like Melissa I've been using Explore for a long time. I recently switched to Goggle Chrome. I'm really happy with it for the most part. I'm familiar with Firefox as I've heard very good things about it, just never got around to using it. I've noticed lately though that when I'm working on my blog in Word Press that I've been having some frustrations. It had to do with using Chrome as my browser. I was talking to my software buddy yesterday who suggested giving Chrome a try and he said that Chrome is a really light weight browser, designed for speed but not able at this time to handle more meaty things. He said "use Firefox". He also mentioned, Most developers and bloggers use Firefox and they are really happy with it. It has most of the functionality of Explorer but works better and much faster. I've also heard this from other Firefox users as well. So, guess what I'll be doing later…you got it. Installing Firefox. So for Melissa, I'd say let's find out about Firefox.
My recent post Social Media And Fitness Can Be Funny
Thanks for stopping by Don! Yeah Chrome is an interesting project. Its not "really" a browser, its an application host that just happens to have browser like functionality. Unfortunately, that presents it some restrictions on what it can do. Also because it wasnt intended as a browser per se, it is still trying to recover from being released with some massive security issues. However the addition of add-ons/extensions recently will really help. Firefox is definitely the "sweet spot" at the moment.
Let me know if you have any questions with firefox, I'll be glad to answer anything I can!
I have just found some great posts on your blog after doing some research for social media.
I have learned some new ideas on how to benefit from social media I will try. I have bookmarked your site and will check for new posts.
Hey Kimberly,
Thank you for this great post because I've been wondering how I could implement something like this. I personally love firefox and use many of it's plugins already, so adding greasemonkey would be a cinch.
I don't know why some people are scared of switching over from IE to firefox because I feel that it will definitely make your life easier
Thanks again,
Angel
My recent post Supercharge Your Relationship Building On Facebook
Kim, Great info! I just recently converted over to Firefox and learned some great stuff in your post. Oh btw, it was hard to let go of IE but glad I made the switch. Look forward to more posts from you.
My recent post 8 Stealth Tweet Tips
Kim, Great info! I just recently converted over to Firefox and learned some great stuff in your post. Oh btw, it was hard to let go of IE but glad I made the switch. Look forward to more posts from you.
My recent post 8 Stealth Tweet Tips
Kim, once again great information here! The FB changes have been annoying to say the least! Nice to know there is a way to make it better. Firefox is by far the best I have used so far and I really do enjoy the ability to use their numerous applications to enhance it's operation to meet my needs.
My recent post Hello world!
Hey Kimberly – Thanks for posting this. Great information.
Must say it was doing my head in seeing all the unnecessary updates!
Been using Firefox for a while now, primarily for the plugins as they make my work life a lot easier and quicker! Of course, don't go crazy, as it can start to really put a strain on the browser.
Thanks again, and keep up the great content
)
My recent post Why Being a Snob Can Hurt Your Rankings
This is an spectacular entry. Thank you very much for the supreme post provided! I was looking for this entry for a long time, but I wasn
Hosea, thanks for stopping by! It looks like my blog may have eaten half of your comment though! *nom nom nom* It was hungry! I guess I should feed my blog more often
I'm glad you enjoyed the post and hopefully it helped you. Facebook Live Feed isn't the most easy to deal with thing nowadays! Have a great day!
very cool. thanks!
Great post Kimberly! Lots of good information in here. I would have been worried about switching to Firefox, but your post and comments have given me the confidence! Thank you!!
I currently use Internet Explorer because some websites have better formatting when I open them in IE. I’ve heard about Mozilla, so I think I might download that. Does this program operate only via Firefox? I love Facebook, but some of my home news feed gets too much. I’m not on it as much anymore because of this reason.
Hey Koi, greasemonkey only runs in Firefox and Chrome so FB Purity also only runs in those two. Firefox is great and oodles safer for you to be using than IE.
kimberly
Hey Kim!
I think your blog is great. Especially since twitter and facebook are being duties on our “to do” lists, your tips save me so much time. I wonder why Facebook doesn’t allow us to have this as an option in our settings. Guess it would eliminate a main feature of the page huh?
Kim- Thanks for responding! Using Firefox now and I see a huge difference in speed and layout. You’re the best. Thanks!
I hate the fricken facebook newsfeed.
I like to use Facebook and Twitter a lot to help market my site. The only downfall is all the updates and feeds that I have to sort through and would rather get rid of it all. Thanks for the tutorial! I’ll give it ago and I just recently downloaded the new Firefox version so hopefully it’ll be faster