Unless you’ve been living the unplugged life lately, you prolly belong to the millions of users who woke up yesterday surprised by Facebook’s new look.

So, if you’re confused on what the heck Top Story and that constantly updating ticker to the right are, then read on as we discuss what these new Facebook features are:

• Top Story – this is basically your News feeds sans the option to view Most Recent and Top News. Facebook simply renamed this to Top Story. Whether it be a new Status Update, info update or photo album, just as long as its new, it’ll be place here.

The ones marked with a blue corner are considered as a Top Story. Not sure though how Facebook categorizes an update as a Top Story, bu I guess it works in the same way as an update lands in the Top News section in the old Facebook.

• Ticker – when your friends comment or Like a post/photo, you’ll see it in real-time in this section. If you find something interesting here and want to add your comment, just click on it and a window will open showing all the previous comments and a field for you to enter yours, provided, of course, it’s not restricted to a select number of users only. You can also use the ticker to easily add a common friend that just recently joined Facebook.

If you want to see more feeds in the ticker, just slide the gray border dividing the ticker and Chat windows down.

Now, if you don’t like Facebook’s new look – and we can’t blame you don’t coz I personally don’t like it too – just change the language setting to English (UK) or if you’re feeling nationalistic, Filipino.

How? Click on the drop down arrow beside Home, select Account Settings, hit the Edit button for Language, and select your preferred language.

Don’t know long this workaround will last, though. So take advantage of it while it lasts.

Or better yet, just switch to Google+ since its now finally open to the public and you might just find yourself a new social network home.

UPDATE: English (UK) is out of the question already. So it might not be long before the new Facebook look is implemented in Filipino too.

Allan David