Facebook made changes to the Facebook Chat sidebar feature, several users are reporting. Now, your favorite online friends appear in the top section of Chat, with a separate list titled “More Online Friends” underneath. This makes it easier to find the Facebook friends you chat with often.
However, we’ve also seen reports where select users are getting a mini News Feed in their Chat sidebar instead. In somes cases, the News Feed appears above your contacts. This appears to be more of an experimental rollout.
Previously, the Facebook Chat sidebar presented your friends to you as one big list, sorted alphabetically by name, not by relevance to you. For what it’s worth, this is the Chat sidebar I still have in my Facebook profile, which indicates that the update is still in the process of being deployed as we speak.
