Facebook users face still more changes

Facebook is at it again.

The social network is tweaking the home pages of its 750 million users, much to the chagrin of some very vocal folks.

The world's largest online social network is expected to announce even more changes Thursday, when it holds its annual conference in San Francisco for developers who create games and other applications for its site.

The gathering follows a trickle of changes to Facebook in the past few of weeks. Some, such as larger photo displays and a feature that makes it easier to group friends into categories, were met with approval -- or at least silence, which in the age of social-media oversharing could well be considered an endorsement.

Then came Wednesday, when many users woke up to find their home pages altered, with what Facebook calls "top stories" on the top of their pages, followed by "recent stories" listed in chronological order. On the right side, meanwhile, there's something called a "ticker," a live feed of all the ongoing activity that also appears in users' news feeds.

By midmorning, the words "new Facebook" quickly became one of the most discussed topics on Twitter. Many comments were negative, though some pointed out that Facebook makes many changes to its site and people eventually get used to it.

For its part, Facebook has long asserted that it makes changes to keep users engaged, and that those alterations are often based on user requests.

Facebook, though clearly the king of social networks, is also competing with Twitter and Google + for attention. As such, the race to add new features has the potential to confuse users, said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer.