Tech
Facebook's latest News Feed change lets you pick who you see first
IMAGE: FACEBOOK
Facebook is now letting you make your News Feed a lot more personal.
The social network introduced a new set of tools meant to give users more control over exactly what they see in their News Feed.
You can adjust the new News Feed preferences, which are only in Facebook's iOS app for now, from the "News Feed Preferences" menu in the "more" section of the Facebook app. The revamped preference menu has four sections: prioritize who to see first, unfollow people to hide their posts, reconnect with people you unfollowed, and discover new pages.
Of the four, the biggest change is "prioritize who to see first," which lets you select which pages and people you always want to see at the top of your News Feed. The feature allows you to select up to 30 accounts whose newest updates will always appear first in your feed. Posts from accounts that have been prioritized will also include a star to remind you that you have opted-in to seeing more of their posts.
IMAGE: FACEBOOK
Greg Marra, Facebook's product manager for News Feed, said the feature was modeled after News Feed's "unfollow" feature, which allows people to choose not to see posts from specific pages and people in their feed. "The thing we were constantly hearing was: 'there's a few people that I really care about and i want to make sure I don't miss stuff from those people,'" he told Mashable.
The new preferences also provide a dedicated menu for unfollowing friends and pages whose updates you don't want to see as well as "reconnecting" with people who you have unfollowed in the past. Additionally, the preferences will also surface recommendations for new pages to follow.
The suggestions in the "discover new pages" menu are influenced by the pages you already like as well as those liked by people like you, and are meant to give users more ways to see the posts they are most interested in, Marra said. The change could be particularly significant for pages run by smaller organizations whose updates may get lost in the noise of other updates.
The new preferences are available now on Facebook's iOS app and the company says the update will be available on desktop and Android "in the coming weeks."
Those who don't make changes in the new preferences won't see changes to their feed, though Marra said the company is always monitoring feedback from users about how to make their feeds better, through testing and surveys. The new preferences are the latest way the network is working to take more signals into account than likes alone.
"Historically, the thing we've relied on most to improve News Feed is looking at what videos do yo watch, what links do you click, what posts do you like, because those are all you saying 'this is something that I want,'" Marra said. "But what we're learning from these surveys is there are other things we need to know about what you care about that don't necessarily mean you clicked the link or liked the post."
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