As I posted before, Facebook's appeal depends to some extent on the "freshness" of the information presented in the feed. There's probably thousands of hours worth of "content" available on most people's Facebook pages. If I considered all the updates from all of my friends as the total information available on Facebook, I (like most people, I would assume) have seen very little of it. The value of each little bit of information about my friends depends on a few things: its recency (wouldn't I rather know what happened to my friends within the past few weeks than know what they were doing last year?) and its relevance to me. Facebook's privileging of the "top stories" over the "most recent" may be an attempt to get users to more relevant information.
They haven't taken away the "most recent" option. Instead, they've turned it into a ticker and put it on the side of the page. Really, they're just preventing users from opting out of seeing the information it deemed to be "top stories" by simply clicking on "most recent". Its interesting to consider the differences between the "most recent" and "top stories" experiences of Facebook. Its likely that people are more apt to merely read "most recent" news and not to actually post anything about it. Facebook has an interest in getting people to post and interact more and be less passive about the experience. That gets them more involved and attached to the application, more "embedded" in some sense. More interaction also gives Facebook more data on users. They can't track what you're looking at when you're scanning "most recent", but they can track posting patterns and use that data to make the "top stories" even more relevant, more satisfying, and better at keeping people on the site.
"Most recent" is really a way of using Facebook for social surveillance, not as a venue for interacting with close ones remotely (which is significantly more valuable a service). Some people may have become accustomed to using Facebook to see the news of people that they really wouldn't classify as close friends, even if Facebook gave them the chance to parse their friends into groups more easily. Maybe they were using it for downward social comparison or "stalking" people, and asking them to create a group of people they like to gawk at and not interact with breaks some sort of spell, makes people more aware of their inner voyeur. In this way, this particular user backlash might be about preserving the "mis-uses" of Facebook, not as a tool for better communication but as a way to look at people without being looked at.
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