Last week Friday Facebook quietly implemented certain changes to the way information is displayed on users’ homepages in an attempt to make it easier to find information.

By using a special algorithm the new Facebook homepage displays more relevant posts.  The more likes, comments or interactions a post has within your network, the more likely it is to appear in your Newsfeed.  This means that posts receiving the most attention within your network will be displayed in the Newsfeed of your network and will engage more users in the conversation.  Peter Deng, a Facebook product manager said “If the content has comments or ‘likes’ by 10 of your mutual friends, it’s something that is important to you.”

Certain old features that have been brought back on request of users include notifications for when friends are tagged in photos, when friends become fans of pages or join groups and when they add a friend.  “Nothing is going away,” Deng said, “we are just moving things around.”

Facebook have removed the Highlights tab on the right hand side and created separate tabs for the Newsfeed and real-time events in a Live Feed.  Next to the Live Feed is a counter keeping track of the number of unread posts in your Live Feed.  The space freed up by the removal of the Highlights tab will be used to display events like birthdays more prominently.

There has been some negative feedback, but I suppose you can’t please everyone.  Over half a million people have joined the group ‘Change Facebook Back To Normal.’  What do you think of the changes?

Facebook introduced a status tagging function on the 14th of September competing more directly with Twitter.  Since Facebook acquired Friendfeed they have been competing with Twitter more aggressively in certain areas.  Recently Facebook added real-time search to its functionality providing Facebook users with the option of searching through results of photos, videos, notes, links, groups and pages from the past 30 days related to their search query.

Unlike the Twitter “@” function you don’t have to remember the name of the person you want to tag as Facebook auto-suggest names in a drop-down box.  The status tagging is not limited to only friends and can also be used to tag groups, pages or events.  At this stage the status tagging functionality only works in your status updates and not when commenting on a friend’s status.  According to Facebook they ‘might’ consider adding the tagging functionality to other areas of Facebook.

To tag someone, enter the “@” symbol and type the name of the friend, page, group or event you want to tag.  The “@” symbol will disappear and the tagged name will remain with a link to the actual page you are tagging.  When you are tagged you will receive a notification and a post will appear on your wall linking back to the original page where you were tagged along with an option to remove the tag like Facebook photos.

For the last two weeks I have been having major issues with my Telkom line, and not knowing what to do about it, until know…

I stick with Telkom because I’ve signed a contract, but I voice my utter disgust at the service delivery while singing the praises of an age old method of getting a message, and now data, from one point to another via the wings of a carrier pigeon.

Winston the Pigeon, owned by The Unlimited,  has gained overnight fame on all  social and media fronts with over 2600 Facebook fans, nearly 400 followers on Twitter and mentions across many news channels.The idea for Winston was born from the concept that a pigeon could do a better job transferring large data files than a Telkom landline. And who did a better job? Well, Winston was able to get a 4Gig card from Howick to Hillcrest in an hour and 8 minutes according to Kevin Rolfe of Unlimited, this excludes the download and short travel by car. This added to the total “data transfer” time which took it to two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds, giving Winston an upload/download speed of about 525kbps. The Telkom line was at 4% complete by the time Winston was picking at seeds and being admired by many, for his awesomeness.

So with the arrival of Seacom and now Winston, at R1 per day, it seems that Telkom might have a bit more competition than it had initially expected.