This morning we received a screenshot of a new feature which appears to assist users with finding “similar posts” within a feed. For example if your friend posts a status update, you can view similar updates by clicking a single link. Unfortunately the new feature doesn’t appear to be working perfectly yet as when this example pictured below was clicked a “working” animation showed up.
Facebook recently added a feature which enables users to display the most recently posted feed items without leaving the page in response to users’ request for a “streaming” version of the news feed. This new feature helps users sort through the increased number of feed stories that they now have visible. Since the redesign, users have been receiving an unfiltered view of their feed.
Depending on who you ask, some people like it while others don’t. While Facebook provides a “highlights” area, it’s still a limited view of your friends’ activities. Whether or not Facebook will use clicks on the “Similar Posts” link to optimize the highlights feed is unknown but that would surely make sense. For the time being, Facebook wants to enable users to filter their feed stories any way they desire.
For some users it has become overly complex while others like the increased level of control. Right now this feature appears to be in beta mode but I’d expect it to roll out in the coming days and weeks. Have you seen this feature in your feed? Was it working properly for you? Thanks to Luka Kladaric for the heads up!
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This interaction point has appeared sparingly in my Stream over the last week, and from what I can gather by my usage of it, it actually bundles many similar actions by a single user who happened to produce many of one action type in a relatively short period of time. For instance, if a friend were to take and publish a number of LivingSocial quizzes, one after the other, only the most recent will be shown in the Stream, while the ones taken previous to it will be hidden behind the "Show _ Similar Posts" link. Clicking will expand all the published stories into view.
It's actually not much different from manner in which the previous News Feed or Mini-Feed would handle multiple similar stories: By lumping them into one consolidated statement. Instead of "Amin loved Champion on Last.fm" followed by "Amin loved Pretty Wings on Last.fm," the previous behavior would result in "Amin loved 2 songs on Last.fm," where the term "2 songs" could be clicked to expand the single story into two stories.
Comment by Amin Issa — May 15, 2009 @ 8:09 am
this just puts the updates of my frens (if they have posted loads at one time-taking lots of space in the feed) in one link.
Comment by Zafarali Ahmed — May 15, 2009 @ 8:49 am
What Ammin said!
This is just a new version of story-consolidation. The lack of story consolidation was a problem with the new homepage feed. It was way too easy for my friends' ditzy wives to fill my homepage will "sent a teddy bear" notices.
Comment by Facebook User — May 15, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Just to confirm the above comments I also see this feature for about a week. It only consolidate similar posts by the same friend that occured on a small period of time like many shared youtube videos etc
Comment by Manogr — May 15, 2009 @ 10:53 am
So many suggested-based services fail in my opinion simply because humans are so diverse and everyone has different opinion of what counts as 'similar'
But Kudos to Fb if they pull it off. Last.fm is not too bad, google 'did you mean…' feature too, amazon/newegg seem to have some relevant products as suggestions. The concept isn't perfect but it's getting better.
Comment by mojaam — May 15, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
But it should be more than that!
Comment by Marshall Kirkpatrick — May 15, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
So I’m quite sure I’m repeating what many others have said, but this has been around for about a week or so, and all it does is consolidate multiple posts of a similar nature so that a single user cannot spam their friends news feeds.
Comment by Jonah Price — May 15, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
Sweet. So they are repairing all the damage done by the recent twitbook downgrade one re-instated feature at a time. Am I the only one to suspect that the facebook redesign was one giant April's fool joke?
Comment by Gerhard — May 15, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Along with what others mentioned, this also saves us from those who have their Twitter feed post to Facebook (I have a friend who posts to Twitter 30+ times a day, that copies to his status). Very glad for it!
Comment by Facebook User — May 18, 2009 @ 9:04 am
I've been seeing this consistently for the past week or so while following the Last Mission to Hubble public page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Last-Mission-to-Hub... (they post every few minutes with status updates during the spacewalk activities) — the feature has been working very well.
Comment by Mike Gaston — May 18, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Hi – can you help with hiding the time/date stamps against activities on Facebook? There used to be a feature to disble them appearing but this appears not to be available any more?
I do not want people knowing when I have accessed FB or indeed to be able to work out how often I have accessd it.
Can you help?
B
Comment by B — May 22, 2009 @ 3:22 am
It is not a good thing for those of us that play games and use the feed to know what jobs in Mafia Wars we need, hassle upon hassle to have to click similar posts each time to see that game feed and no way to override it.
Comment by Facebook User — April 14, 2010 @ 8:52 am
THE NEW FEATURE SUCKS! QUIT MESSING WITH THE GAME! ITS ONLY MAKING PEOPLE NOT PLAY ANYMORE. I SUGGEST FIRING SOME EMPLOYEES
Comment by mandy — April 14, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
I hate it. I play Farmville and its a pain having to flip thru and find collectable now all i see is who are adding friends they need to fix it or give us a choice on what we want to see or a 1000000 people will be moving to bebo Fb really should ask the people who use it what they want not just change they have made thing worst. i so redady to quit using the service and find a new place to play .. sorry but you ask
Comment by kathy — April 14, 2010 @ 2:50 pm
this new similar posts thing is no good it makes it alot harder to play any games at all this is really stupid if people dont like it they can hide it Ihave had some of my neighbors quit already over this there is so many compaining just switch it back please!
Comment by sandy — April 15, 2010 @ 5:59 pm
it is soooooooo annoying that when you are playing games and trying to help people or collect things everytime you collect something you have to click on show similar posts ! PLEASE FIX IT ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by felicia — April 16, 2010 @ 10:34 pm
After reading the above comments I now understand the how and why of the purpose of similar posts. I do play Farmville and would like to have an option to have similar posts or to not have similar posts. I don't care for the feature because when I do click a game prize from a friend it does not go back to my same place on the page. Instead I have to go back in and relocate my last claim gift. It creates a lot of headaches and takes much extra time to go through the things I would like to read and respond to. If I don't want to see someones feed I have an option to hide it.
Comment by susan — April 19, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
"For the time being, Facebook wants to enable users to filter their feed stories any way they desire."
This is not true. I've been searching for any way to disable this feature. The only means I've located are among the scams to gather your information.
Comment by S — April 25, 2010 @ 10:03 pm