Facebook announced today the changes it plans on implementing to its site in the coming year, focusing more on sharing information within your friend network, and showing some changes to the home page launching next week.

Just like how Facebook first connected you with your friends, the site's usage has been expanding to include other kinds of users, and Facebook wants to make sure these users have the same kinds of options for sharing updates and info with you. Organizations and public figures will now be able to have their own profiles, working the same as any other user's. This is a change from the existing Pages system, and will let these users upload photos and videos, and share status updates with you and any other interested users. This might be a bit of an attempt to capture some of the success Twitter is seeing with the celebrities who post on the service.

The new homepage is built around the publisher, a widget that quickly lets you post content to your profile. Below that you'll find the stream where you can see all your friends' updates as they post them. Facebook pointed out that it's worked to speed up how these posts populate across the site, now offering real-time updates of all your friends' statuses. You'll be able to specify how to filter all this raw news, choosing only to see updates from certain groups of friends, for example. The site has put up a demo of what the new layout will look like, so you can get familiar with it before it's released next week.
 

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