what's up with this Facebook ticker/sidebar thing?

[B-17 BAAUUMERRR]

i always see people with a FB ticker on their FB account actively updating with stuff that their friends are doing (liking stuff, commenting, listening to music, etc) and i never see it on my computer. i hear it's because you need alot of friends who at the same time use FB frequently. i have 104 friends and i've never seen the sidebar. the weird thing is that i used my friends' laptop one day to get on FB and bam, there was the ticker on the side. wtf? is there something wrong with my computer or something? my laptop is really old so yeah. is there any way to turn it on? (if i ever really wanted to that is). just wondering