Facebook’s New Design

Anyone else struggling with the new Facebook Design?  You’re not alone!  I’m hearing it daily from business professionals across a wide variety of industries.  It can be difficult to get used to a new layout but don’t give up!   Perseverance is key so let’s just tackle this together.   Here are a few pointers to help get you started.

Left Menu – The left menu now contains everything the footer used to hold.  It has applications, photos, groups, events, emails and more.  Go here first when you’re searching for almost anything.  Consider each menu item a category rather than a final click point.  For example:  When you click on the “Friends” category you will now be able to not only find new friends, you’ll also be able to see the lists of friends you’ve created, find new friends or get the status updates for your current friends.

Top Menu – The top menu let’s you quickly get updates on friend requests, emails (also found in the left menu) and notifications.  The “Search” bar is also now in a prominent location at the top.

You’ll also now use the Account tab at the top to edit everything from account settings and privacy settings to application settings and even edit your friends.  You can edit the lists you have people assigned to, create new lists or even delete a list simply by clicking on the “Account” tab and choosing “Edit Friends”.

As a whole, all the edits you would want to make to your account are going to be found right here under “Account”.

News Feed – The news feed is thankfully where it’s always been!  Right here in the center.  Make your updates, find out what your connections are up to and make your comments.

Convinced you aren’t seeing updates from all of your friends?  Try this…

When you are looking at your news feed you’ll notice you have two options at the top, right of your status update window.  You can choose either “Top News” or “Most Recent”.  Choose “Most Recent”.  Then scroll all the way to the bottom of your news feed.  You’ll see the following menu below the last update.  Choose “Edit Options”.

Once you’ve done this, the following box will open

Under the “Number of Friends” make sure you’ve chosen 5000.  Otherwise Facebook will chose people whose updates they think you want to see.  Those will be the only people who will show up in your news feed.  Making this change will ensure you get to see everyone’s updates and not just those of a select few.

Be sure to check back for more information and join me on my next post to learn how to create a fan page that gets attention!

Did you find this helpful?  Have more questions?  I’d be happy to answer them for you!  Tell us your experiences with the new Facebook design and share all that you’ve learned since its release!