How do you use Facebook?

Is it just to stay in touch with High School friends?

Maybe a way to re-kindle old “flames” with your college sweetheart? (uh…honey? LOL)

Or maybe you like to follow celebrities to see what they’re up to…

For me, Facebook has been a HUGE part of my marketing success with one of my niche websites.

How I Use Facebook for Business

• It’s a great way to connect directly with your target audience, get to know the key players, and create business relationships that can turn in to profitable endeavors.
• I also use Facebook to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the online marketing industry.
• If you follow the right people and become a Fan of the best Facebook Pages, you’ll be kept in tune with what’s happening (and then you can blog about it 🙂 ).

One thing that rolled out today on Facebook was a new Home Page Layout.

Here’s what Facebook had to say about it:

At Facebook, one of our main priorities is helping you stay on top of what is going on with the people and things you care about most. That’s why today we are beginning to roll out some changes to the home page that simplify your experience by offering two views of News Feed: a summary view of the most interesting activity that’s happened in the last day and a real-time view that shows you what is happening right now.

You will be able to catch up on what you may have missed while you were away from Facebook and then easily switch to the real-time stream when you want to see posts as soon as they’re shared. Here’s how it works:

News Feed
When you log into Facebook, you’ll see the most interesting things that happened in the last day in the “News Feed” view. News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.

Live Feed
Once you’ve caught up on what you missed, you can click through to “Live Feed” to see what’s happening right now. As long as you remain logged into Facebook, you’ll continue to see posts and activity from your friends in real-time. You can edit what appears in this view by clicking “Edit Options” at the bottom of the home page.

Here’s what it looks like on your Home Page:

One of my fellow online marketing friends, Jordan Brown (follow him on Twitter), had this to say about the Facebook change:

I love news feed is back now: I don’t have to sit on facebook and watch the live feed and hope I don’t lose out on something – they will bring it to me!

Why Did Facebook Make the Changes?

Facebook explains:

Some of you may ask why we are changing the home page again. Like you, we know it can be disruptive when things are moved around, but we hope that these changes make Facebook a more valuable experience for you. We put a lot of thought into all the changes we make to the site and do a lot of testing before releasing anything.

In the past, the “News Feeds” were what you used to see on the right side of the home page.  The new “News Feed” function makes it easier to engage with what’s happening via your favorite people, groups, and pages.

Other features that were added:

• when your friends have been tagged in photos
• when your friends have become fans of Pages
• when your friends RSVP for events
• when your friends join groups
• when your friends make new friends
• birthdays and events are now more visible in the right column of the home page

What do you think of the Facebook changes?