How to remove the Facebook ticker

If you have checked Facebook recently, you have probably noticed a sidebar ticker has been added to the right-hand column of the newly redesigned News Feed, along with complaints and snarky comments about the new News Feed and this ticker. About the ticker, Facebook says:

Ticker, on the right-hand side of your account, lets you see all your friends' activity in real-time. When you hover over an item on ticker, you can see the full story and join the conversation as it happens. Ticker updates itself as stories happen. This gives you a more complete picture of what your friends are doing, right now.

To my eye, this ticker needlessly busies the News Feed page. It's a Facebook news feed inside a Facebook news feed. It reminds me of the joke about there being so many Starbucks that the coffee giant started opening new Starbucks stores inside existing Starbucks stores.

Facebook doesn't allow you to close the ticker, stating:

You can't close ticker, but you can make it smaller by moving the horizontal bar between ticker and chat. Slide the bar up to hide ticker and make your chat list longer. Pull the bar down to show more of the ticker and hide chat.

Thankfully, there are quick and easy ways in both Firefox and Chrome to get rid of the ticker.

In Chrome, simply install the Hide Facebook SideBar Ticker extension and the ticker will vanish.

In Firefox, you will need to install a user script. To do so, first install the Greasemonkey add-on and then install this user script. When prompted, restart Firefox and the ticker will be gone. Do note that this user script removes the entire right column of Facebook, including the ticker, event invitations, ads, sponsored stories, friends' photos, and so on.