The ticker shares the right-hand column of your browser with Chat. While you can't close the ticker, you can make it smaller by sliding the bar between the ticker and chat, though this feature is contingent on the size of your browser.

Sliding the bar up will make the ticker smaller and Chat larger; sliding it down will make ticker larger and chat smaller. Clicking on an item in the ticker will expand it to display more information.

If you want to see fewer stories or fewer types of stories in the ticker, you can click the drop-down menu in the top right of a story and click "Hide story." Do note that every time you use the hide and unsubscribe settings to control what you see in your News Feed, it will also impact what you see in the ticker. For example, if you unsubscribed from a friend's posts via your News Feed, they will also be unsubscribed from the ticker.

4. How Your Privacy Settings Are Affected

Facebook says that the new News Feed and the ticker do not affect your . Ticker will only display information that you're already able to see anywhere else on Facebook. Facebook does say, however, that if you start seeing stories that you haven't noticed before, it's likely because "ticker makes things easier to discover. It doesn't mean that privacy around Facebook has changed."