Last night Facebook rolled out a new feature to the newsfeed which enables users to filter the stories that are displayed. You can select to display only stories from specific applications or specific friend lists. This is an interesting feature but I’m not sure that it does all that is expected. Ultimately users want to be able to see more or less stories from specific applications and friend lists. This feature simply displays specific stories that you would like to see from one source.
Also, you are currently limited to the applications that you can filter from. For instance, I am only able to filter activities from within Events, Pages, Groups, FriendFeed and Google Reader. It would be awesome if users could select from any application or their bookmarked applications. Caroline McCarthy suggests that this is possibly a result of the applications that your friends have installed. Apparently my friends on Facebook are all geeks based on the applications showing in my feed!
Filtering feeds is going to become increasingly important as we begin seeing more news items. The model has yet to be perfected but Facebook is definitely taking the lead when it comes to trying various filtering models. Do you find these new filters to be useful?
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I think filters will become even more useful when we are able to apply multiple filters simultaneously – like to see updates from FriendFeed for a certain friends list.
Comment by Svetlana Gladkova — August 13, 2008 @ 5:14 am
It will be great for the sponsored advertisements on the home page and in the news feed because the target audience will be more specific. It will only show advertisements you supposedly would care about.
Comment by MarketingCor — August 13, 2008 @ 7:12 am
All stories auto refreshes too.
Comment by Smythe — August 13, 2008 @ 7:42 am
I think filters will become even more useful when we are able to apply multiple filters simultaneously – like to see updates from FriendFeed for a certain friends list.
Comment by Svetlana Gladkova — August 13, 2008 @ 9:14 am
It will be great for the sponsored advertisements on the home page and in the news feed because the target audience will be more specific. It will only show advertisements you supposedly would care about.
Comment by MarketingCor — August 13, 2008 @ 11:12 am
All stories auto refreshes too.
Comment by Smythe — August 13, 2008 @ 11:42 am
How do you filter your newsfeed to a specific application? I want a Vampire Wars newsfeed but can't seem to find where I can do this. The only blank I see on my home page is for searches for up groups, pages and people. Castle Age has a newsfeed link on its Monsters tab.
Comment by Jamie — February 13, 2010 @ 6:02 am
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Comment by hotel tuerkei — February 13, 2010 @ 8:12 am
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I HATE HATE HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Ashli — September 21, 2011 @ 1:14 am
PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK, I do NOT LIKE THE NEWQ FACEBOOK.
Comment by jean — September 24, 2011 @ 5:02 am
I've lost my interest pretty much in facebook these days. When I put people on my friends list it means I want to see all of their status updates and I want them to be able to see mine. I don't care what comments my friends are making to their friends that I don't know. I also think facebooks idea of what a top story is completely and absolutely does not agree with what I would consider a top story. I understand that it's important to come up with new ideas to keep the site fresh but increasingly the talk among the people I know is of how incredibly disenchanted they've become with facebook. I hope that the developers at facebook listen to what the people are saying and restore it to it's previous format. Otherwise I don't think the popularity of face book will stay at the levels it's previously enjoyed. Very dissapointed over all…..
Comment by andrea tucker — October 22, 2011 @ 5:44 pm