Facebook Launches Newsfeed Rating System
Posted by Nick O'Neill on November 21st, 2007 2:43 PMFacebook has just launched their newsfeed rating system. Valleywag had previously leaked the rating system screenshots but it has just gone live. The system is pretty basic. If you like a newsfeed entry you can give it a thumbs up. If you don’t like it, you click the “X” to remove it from your feed and your newsfeed will slowly get better. This is pretty smart of Facebook given that the newsfeed is probably Facebook’s strongest asset.
There was a lot of discussion surrounding news feed optimization previously but that has since quelled and become almost irrelevant. Ultimately, it is the user that determines their newsfeed, not Facebook. If a user doesn’t like receiving newsfeed stories from your application, chances are they won’t be receving them for very long. What would be a nice addition to this rating system is to have new newsfeed items pop-up if you remove ones that you don’t like.
I’m not quite sure how heavily I’ll be using this feature but it is definitely cool! Screenshots have been attached below. Do you think this new feature is a good one?
(4.64 out of 5)
(4.22 out of 5)
November 21st, 2007 at 2:06 pm
how do you control this after the fact. What if I decide I don’t want to see any newsfeed stories about gifts being given, after a while they should stop showing up. If in the future I decide I do want to see them, how do I control that?
November 21st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Jeff, stop being so indecisive
You need to stick with your gut instinct 
You make a very good point though. Perhaps they’ll set up a page where you can view past stories that you’ve removed and unmark them.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:06 pm
how do you control this after the fact. What if I decide I don’t want to see any newsfeed stories about gifts being given, after a while they should stop showing up. If in the future I decide I do want to see them, how do I control that?
November 21st, 2007 at 3:17 pm
jeff… you can click the icon a second time to change your mind.
nick… i like this feature a lot! assuming it translates into better feed content. i can now get rid of all the application noise and see more of the interesting content my friends are adding. some applications add good content, but many don’t. presumably, facebook will decipher the apps i like to hear from.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Jeff, stop being so indecisive
You need to stick with your gut instinct 
You make a very good point though. Perhaps they’ll set up a page where you can view past stories that you’ve removed and unmark them.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Too bad I can’t ‘thumbs down’ the ad for Spider-man 3 on DVD.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Moreover, what am I registering a dislike towards? I have a friend who continually joins inane groups such as ‘10 reasons boys smell’ that I really don’t need to know about.
So, if I click ‘remove’ whenever I see such an announcement, will Facebook be smart enough to realise that it’s just her groups I don’t want to know about, or will it think I don’t want to know about groups for anyone?
November 21st, 2007 at 4:17 pm
jeff… you can click the icon a second time to change your mind.
nick… i like this feature a lot! assuming it translates into better feed content. i can now get rid of all the application noise and see more of the interesting content my friends are adding. some applications add good content, but many don’t. presumably, facebook will decipher the apps i like to hear from.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
It seems to be a cool feature that, you are right, will get better.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Too bad I can’t ‘thumbs down’ the ad for Spider-man 3 on DVD.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Moreover, what am I registering a dislike towards? I have a friend who continually joins inane groups such as ‘10 reasons boys smell’ that I really don’t need to know about.
So, if I click ‘remove’ whenever I see such an announcement, will Facebook be smart enough to realise that it’s just her groups I don’t want to know about, or will it think I don’t want to know about groups for anyone?
November 21st, 2007 at 5:31 pm
It seems to be a cool feature that, you are right, will get better.
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:17 am
It’s a great feature that people will use. It will also dramatically limit news about people adding applications or giving hugs etc. this means application will yet again lose some of their virality because almost nobody is going to want to see that.
do you know if the news feed system also values the object or just the object type eg:
i don’t want to see eric adding “ghosts” –> is application adds gonna show up less and / or eric doing adding applications and / or eric doing anything?
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:17 am
It’s a great feature that people will use. It will also dramatically limit news about people adding applications or giving hugs etc. this means application will yet again lose some of their virality because almost nobody is going to want to see that.
do you know if the news feed system also values the object or just the object type eg:
i don’t want to see eric adding “ghosts” –> is application adds gonna show up less and / or eric doing adding applications and / or eric doing anything?
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to decide which to x and which to check, as I tend to skim everything.
But, as I went through my Feed, I found a bunch of stuff I’ve no interest in (like who’s giving whom a gift, or news related to apps I don’t have and don’t care to add). So, we’ll see - hopefully this nifty new instant feature will clean up the “visual noise” a bit.
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:20 pm
At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to decide which to x and which to check, as I tend to skim everything.
But, as I went through my Feed, I found a bunch of stuff I’ve no interest in (like who’s giving whom a gift, or news related to apps I don’t have and don’t care to add). So, we’ll see - hopefully this nifty new instant feature will clean up the “visual noise” a bit.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:12 pm
The growth of a community (Digg vs Mixx)…
The first to popularize the “up” and “down” buttons for rating things which has now even spread to Facebook…
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:12 am
The growth of a community (Digg vs Mixx)…
The first to popularize the “up” and “down” buttons for rating things which has now even spread to Facebook…
April 15th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
[...] this year Facebook added a new feature to their newsfeed enabling users to rate newsfeed stories. A number of people that I spoke with [...]