Facebook has announced a number of changes which will affect both users and marketers.

For users, the news feed will now update in real time rather than every 10-15 minutes as in the past. And the Facebook home page is getting new filtering options that will allow users to specify which friends they want to receive updates on, as well as more control over which applications (like photos) will be favored in the stream.

Some of the navigation will move from the top of the page to the left side as it was before the last redesign – something users have been complaining about ever since.

The changes for marketers are even more significant. Facebook “Pages,” which are used heavily by businesses looking to promote their brands to “fans,” are morphing into “public profiles” which look and work more like regular member pages.

The most important change: These new public profiles have real time status updates in the center of the screen, an information panel on the left, and a Wall section – all similar to personal profile pages. Another new feature: If you’re a fan of a particular brand, updates will now appear much more frequently on your personal activity feed.

Inside Facebook has seven “before and after” shots for the profile pages of Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Michael Phelps, The New York Times, U2, Ashton Kutcher and Sarah Palin.

The changes are designed to enable businesses to become more “conversational” and interactive, as well as to help personalize a brand. The idea is that, the more engaged users are with a particular organization, the more sticky any advertising placed on the page will be.

The updates also seem intended to help Facebook become more Twitter-like. Marketers have flocked to Twitter in recent months, pushing out everything from new product announcements to coupons via their Twitter feed. Now businesses on Facebook can do the same thing.

Facebook is allowing users to opt-in to a preview version this week, with full deployment aimed at February 11.