Facebook has created yet another way for users to slice and dice the news feed: You can now choose to see only the activity of the friends you interact with most.
Access this new setting by scrolling down to the bottom of the page with the news feed and clicking on “edit options,” which pops open a window like the image shows below this post.
Some people’s home pages default to “friends and pages you interact with most,” as Josh Constine pointed out, suggesting that this occurs for people who joined Facebook more recently. I wonder whether this setting shows up for those who haven’t yet created any friend lists, and also for folks who haven’t tried other filters already available for viewing the news feed.
All of these ways for slicing and dicing the news feeds make the most sense for users with larger lists of friends that use the site the heaviest. If you have only 100 friends and they don’t update too often, you probably don’t need to adjust whose posts show up in the news feed.
Personally, I like to read all of my contacts’ updates and keep the news feed set to default to “most recent.” How about you? And what do you think about this latest addition to Facebook’s news feed filters?
I am very upset about this feature. My business page supports over 6,800 people, a portion of which came over as a direct result of advertising on FB. Some of my users visit every 6 weeks. This feature goes on without any notification to the user, so many people are writing me wondering why I do not show up in their news feed. Many read my page posts, but don't comment or hit the "like" button, so they are no swarmed by 80 alerts from all the other people commenting, etc. This is a big no-no and impacts my decision to spend any more ad dollars on FB.
Comment by Guest — February 11, 2011 @ 2:14 pm
Just when we didn't think Facebook could get any better! Way to go! Thanks for the post
Comment by @sylvangroup — February 11, 2011 @ 6:17 pm
I think it's a useful feature – however, I prefer to keep my list on the broad reaching side. Granted, I have 1800 facebook friends (friends, people from church, clients, friends of clients, etc…) but facebook was already sorting through and showing only the top 500 in your newsfeed. There previously was an option to either "let facebook pick" or "choose who you want to see updates from". I guess this is a new version of that previous feature without it being a full-time choice.
Comment by heyDarren — February 11, 2011 @ 10:34 pm
Like the author, I prefer the feed default to be set to "most recent", however, a number of pages I have liked seem to show little thought about the annoying constant stream of messages they send. Many messages in one day is just too much, and it clogs the feed of other things I like to see towards the top of the stream.
So, I recently trialled using "top news" option instead – and let the FB algo take care of my stream noise. It does a good job, but, those annoying offenders still make a too frequent appearance.
I'm now going for a combination of "top news", hiding all updates from particular pages, and assigning those naughty pages to specific lists so I can flick in and out of those views. I tells ya, it's full time effort to keep on top of all the information. I might make more use of the unlike button as well.
Comment by Brad Taylor — February 12, 2011 @ 4:50 am
This seems an odd change to make. Not until I read this was I even aware of such a setting. I checked and FaceBook had shifted me over to the new setting without asking me. But this seems to then duplicate the functionality of "Top News" I depended on the "Most recent" to NOT filter by interactivity but to just give me the raw feed. I dislike FBs penchant for changing settings without some form of opt-in or opt-out notification. Just notify the user of the change instead of stealthing a change into place.
Comment by Dana Lee Ling — February 14, 2011 @ 7:28 am
I couldn't agree more Dana. Facebook needs to realize it must inform its users of an update or change to the way the site functions instead of just rolling out new features and leaving it up to the masses to figure it out.
Comment by @mksidman — February 14, 2011 @ 9:34 am
We have seen our interactions and CTR on our updates plummet since this new News Feed "relevance" thing.
The problem is: it's not opt-in! Everyone I have talked to has had their News Feed automatically changed, without any notice from Facebook! It's ridiculous.
It's also potentially devastating for Pages, because what happens when a new user likes our Page? How do we get the chance to make them a regular user and have our Page come up in their Relevant News Feed? Without an opportunity for a user to see our updates at least regularly for a week or two, we have no chance of ever showing up in their News Feed again – even if they liked our Page.
So what will Facebook do to ensure equal opportunity for Pages to become interacted with and relevant to users?
Comment by @unicornbooty — February 14, 2011 @ 4:41 pm
You also could just unlike those annoying people and hopefully they will get the message when so many people unsub their pages!
Comment by @unicornbooty — February 14, 2011 @ 4:42 pm
Yes, couldn't agree more. They need to inform and empower, especially when a change can not only impact the user but everyone else who is publishing and sharing on Facebook.
Comment by @unicornbooty — February 14, 2011 @ 4:43 pm
I agree with the people above: although I understand it a) from a facebook perspective and b) from a user perspective I do NOT understand it at all from a stakeholder / shareholder perspective:
This SERIOUSLY impacts business' opotunity to use FB as a tool to create a community: if not every post is interacted with within the largest part of your TA, you will be losing eyeballs.
So you first put in money to get people to your page and like you… now all of a sudden that what you have done in the past is useless…. how do you explain that?
Though I understand their quest for relevance, they should understand that unless it makes sense for a $*^%load of companies to be in FB for the long haul, they are NOT worth the 50 billion they are now valued at.
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why on feed news, top news section. those friends sending anything keep duplicating at least six times?.
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I am furious that Facebook changed me to this new setting without my knowledge & without explanation. They are so bad at making changes & then setting all users to the new changed option without any notice that a new change is available or (most importantly) that they changed users' profiles without their knowledge.
I am so angry I could scream.
This new setting happened to me a couple of weeks ago, apparently, and I had to play detective to figure out 1. what happened, 2. if this was a new thing, 3. if I could change it back, & 4. how to change it back. It was exhausting.
How hard is it to notify users of a new feature? How problematic could it be to let users adopt new options on their own instead of making them stealth defaults?
Comment by Kane Watkins — September 17, 2011 @ 8:51 am
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IT SUCKS ! PLAIN AND SIMPLE. change it back. And if you ( meaning Facebook ) want to implement changes, allow us to do it and leave the old way of doing it as a DEFAULT ! Not all of us, walk around 24/7 texting and listening to our IPODS. Some of us are post tech age and this sort of thing is nothing less than ANNOYING ! CHANGE IT BACK, AND STOP !
Comment by James Gherson — September 21, 2011 @ 3:52 pm
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