iMedia Connection: All Feeds. Facebook's New NewsFeed: A Big Shot Fired in The War Agains. Facebook just made one of the biggest changes to the site’s user experience since the introduction of the News Feed three years ago. News Feed was the place in the very center of the site where all the activities of a user’s friends were displayed in reverse chronological order. That feature is now called the Live Feed and the News Feed has become a filtered display of activity highlights instead. In September 2006 the News Feed was a radical idea; thousands of Facebook users revolted against the idea that all their friends would be shown every photo they uploaded, when their relationship status changed and other information as soon as it was available. Today we live in a different world. The real-time flow of social activity data is very exciting, but many people have cautioned that it will be a net-negative for users’ experience of the web as we’re flooded with an overwhelming quantity of low-quality information.
Everyone’s trying to solve this problem. How It Works What It Means. Readers expect news to find them. More than a year ago, Brian Stelter had a story in The New York Times about how the social-media generation takes it upon themselves to pass on the news they feel is worthwhile. The story contained a quote from an unidentified college student that has become iconic of the new journalism evolving before our eyes. The student said: “If the news is that important, it will find me.” The line meant many things to many people. BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis and the Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram, a colleague here at Nieman, both wrote about it at the time.
That single line seemed to capture what is changing in journalism. So why am I bringing all this up now, more than 18 months after the pivotal story — a lifetime in the web world? Well, Monday, the news found me. It was the type of day where I wasn’t at a computer much. Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support. Obviously, something was wrong, very wrong.
Sure enough. For me, this was big news indeed. A great deal. Why? Planet Midgard.