14 DAY TRIAL // On cue, Facebook users started complaining about the changes to the News Feed and especially about the Facebook Ticker that the site has just unveiled. The Ticker had been in testing for several months now and feedback, at least from the people who bothered to voice their opinions has been mostly negative.
The Facebook blog post announcing the changes has close to 5,000 comments, many of them complaining about them. It does have 1,700 Likes, but, then again, any Facebook post racks up likes and comments fast.
Facebook introduced a unified News Feed which merges both Top Stories and Recent Updates.
The idea is to give users a list of the big stuff that happened since they last visited the site and then surface the relevant stories as they come in.
But some users didn't like the idea of Top Stories in the first place. Many complain that they never get relevant stories that way and that they've never used the feature ever since it was introduced.
Until now, they had a choice, they could switch to the Recent Updates tab and ignore Top Stories. They can't do that anymore.
But a lot more people are complaining about the Facebook Ticker. That's hardly surprising since plenty complained about it during the testing phases, that lasted several months.
Now that the feature is available to all users, the number of complains has grown exponentially. Many find it redundant, since they already get the important stories in the News Feed. Others find it distracting since it's constantly updating.
That said, the Facebook Ticker will make a lot more sense once the music integration feature is released. When a friend starts listening to a track, it will show up in the Ticker and users will be able to join in and start listening to it to.
The Ticker has the potential to really increase engagement and get people to spend more and the site and do more as well.
The Ticker is important to Facebook's strategy, so it's likely not going anywhere any time soon. The only question is, how long will it take for users to get accustomed to it and how many users actually find it distracting.