Among the new changes suffered by Facebook, users will finally get to see constant updates from their contacts similarly to Twitter, it was announced on Wednesday.

In a move aimed to secure users from switching to the increasingly popular Twitter, the social networking site introduced a new homepage to allow streaming of "posts from your friends in real-time."

"As people share more, the timeline gets filled in more and more with what is happening with everything you're connected to," wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, explaining the changes in a Facebook blog posting Wednesday. "The pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it."

The status prompt was also modified from "What are you doing right now?" to "What's on your mind?" to reflect the new approach encouraging a more real-time interaction among users.

"Today we're taking a few steps to move in that direction. This isn't something we've been working on for a long time... We're not sure exactly where this is going to end up," Zuckerberg announced.

The revamped page features added filters as well. The filters give you greater control over what you see in the Facebook Stream, letting you choose to see updates from only specific users or specific sources. If you'd rather not see content that comes from particular applications, for example, you can opt to filter it out.

Another change concerns the 5000-friend limit a Facebook user can have which was lifted allowing users to have an unlimited number of friends.

Facebook will also offer a Pages feature that is akin to a static home page for public figures such as President Obama and Britney Spears, and organizations such as CNN. As of Wednesday, those pages started to look more like individual profiles. Users of public profiles are now able to sign up fans as friends, issue status updates and send messages. Among those with new profile pages are U2 and Stanford University.

"This will be successful because it gives Facebook users more control over news feeds, and it replicates Twitter," says Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research. He says 18 million Facebook users update their status at least once a day.