Facebook plans to launch a new homepage, with a focus on activity streams. The social networking site has long had a section called the "news feed" which provides updates from your network of contacts. But the difference between that feed and the new stream is that users will start seeing updates on their homepages in real time.

You'll also be able to adjust what's displayed in your activity stream by using a navigation menu on the left side of the screen to filter results by groups or specific applications. For example, if you only want information about what books your friends have read recently, you just click on the appropriate app in the sidebar.

Facebook is also making Pages more like user profiles, which means you can get status updates from page owners. This will also let users have more than 5,000 friends by creating a Page.

The new features will be available via a preview page later today. The goal is to push them out to all users next Wednesday.

[via Business Insider and CNet]