Facebook tweaks site to rival Twitter

By Adrian Pearce
Newsbeat online editor

Facebook is feeling the pinch as rival Twitter grows in popularity

Forget "What are you doing right now?", Facebook's come up with a new question - "What's on your mind?"

The site's having another revamp and it seems it's all about taking on Twitter.

Starting from next week there will be a new homepage that lets users receive continuous updates from their friends instead of every 10 or 15 minutes.

Facebook's also adding filters so people can choose which of their friends to keep up with and which to silence.

Celebrity updates

Users will be able to limit news from those annoying people who aren't so annoying that you don't necessarily want to take the ultimate step and "de-friend" them.

Celebrities will also be able to keep you posted on what they're up to, rather than having effectively static pages. US President Barack Obama and U2 are already signed up to the change.

It seems Facebook's feeling the pinch from Twitter - as people find expressing themselves in 140 characters or less more fun.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says: "The need for people to easily discover the most recent and relevant content has grown."

In a conference call with reporters, Facebook executives didn't spend much time talking about the financial side of the changes.

However, they did admit the site was moving in a direction that would make it easier for companies to reach users and interact with them.