Baby photos. News articles. Selfies. Advertisements. Job announcements.
It’s likely your Facebook News Feed contains some combination of these, if not all of them (and likely other categories, too). That’s both the beauty and the curse of News Feed: It provides updates from all aspects of your life in one place, including those you may not care to see.
In March, Facebook announced a News feed redesign. Mark Zuckerberg told press, “What we are trying to give everyone is a copy of the best personalized newspaper in the world.” The redesign has since stumbled, but the goal of turning Facebook into a “personalized newspaper” remains strong. And Facebook could use your help.
Mashable sat down with Greg Marra, Facebook’s product manager for News Feed, to discuss how users can best curate the content that they see in News Feed. The easiest way to change what you see? Engage with content, says Marra.
“The basic interactions of News Feed are some of the most important signals that we get,” he explains. “Unfortunately, those interactions aren’t able to capture everything that we want to know, so we also give people additional controls to tell us things we can’t figure out just from normal usage of News Feed.”
Here’s what we learned.
If You Want to Stop Seeing Posts From a Facebook Friend…
If you’re cold-blooded, eliminating News Feed posts from an annoying friend or ex-flame is simple: Unfriend them. But many people don’t have the heart to completely eliminate someone from their Facebook life.
In this instance, you can also choose to “unfollow” a friend, essentially muting him without alerting him of such. This person will remain your Facebook friend, and you can easily add his updates back to your News Feed at any time (again, without him realizing anything changed).
If a post from someone you wish to unfollow comes through your News Feed, you can click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the post to unveil a dropdown menu. Click “unfollow.” Simple as that. Or you can go to his profile and click on the “Following” button (it will change to “Follow”). This is also how you can bring a user’s posts back to your feed if you have a change of heart.
The bad news is there is no real middle ground here. For example, you can’t identify that you enjoy articles from a friend, but don’t want to see his profile picture changes. It’s either all (follow) or nothing (unfollow).
Facebook previously used the term “Hide All” for this feature, but switched to Follow/Unfollow in December because people were more familiar with the terminology. (It’s also used on other sites, like Twitter and Pinterest.) Since making the language switch, there have been three times as many people unfollowed, says Marra.
The “Unfollow” feature will be available on mobile for the next Facebook app update, says Marra.
If You Want to See More Posts From a Facebook Friend…
Maybe it’s an influential thought leader. Maybe it’s just a close friend. Either way, some people just share great content, and you want to be sure you see more of it.
The best way to make this happen is to simply engage with their posts. “Like” or comment on things that comes through News Feed from that person. This alerts Facebook that you enjoy the content they share, says Marra.
You can also take this one step further and set up a notification alert for content from friends you absolutely can’t miss. Go to that friend’s (or brand’s) profile page, and click on the “Friends” button to the right of her profile picture. Select “Get Notifications.” Now, anytime this user posts, you will be alerted with a notification. And it will certainly appear in your News Feed.
Create Additional, Personalized News Feed Lists
Posts in your News Feed can seem incredibly random, and with so much going on, you could miss some stories or posts that you truly care about. In order to avoid missing anything, try creating a custom Feed.
When you log in to Facebook, look for the “Friends” section along the left-hand rail and click. Here you will see a collection of unique News Feeds, including groups Facebook has already created for you based on your prior work or school affiliations.
You Can’t Eliminate Ads, But You Can Give Feedback
There is no way to fully eliminate ads from News Feed. You can, however, provide feedback to Facebook to let it know which ads you like, and which ads miss the mark.
If you see an ad that comes across your Feed that you dislike, click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner. Click “I don’t want to see this.” That alone alerts Facebook that the ad isn’t working for you, but you can provide even more feedback by answering the questions that follow.
If you do like an ad, actually “Like” the ad. This will encourage Facebook to give you similar ads, or ads from the same advertiser.
Take Facebook’s Survey
On any post that comes across your News Feed, you can click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner and select “Take a survey to improve News Feed.” The survey is 10 questions long, and shouldn’t take more than a minute.
Users will be shown 10 posts; they’ll select from a spectrum how closely they “Strongly Disagree” with a post, or “Strongly Agree” with it. The survey is slightly confusing. You may strongly disagree with the content but enjoy the person who posted it. The survey does not allow users to specify which aspects of the post they like or dislike, but Marra says the survey does help, particularly when it comes to things people enjoy but choose not to “Like” or comment on for one reason or another.
“There are some things that you like seeing in your News Feed because you wanted to know that thing, but you don’t want to ‘Like’ it because maybe it’s something sad that happened,” explains Marra. “This [survey] is a way for us to know, sort of beyond those signals, what people appreciate seeing, versus what they feel like is a bummer that they don’t really want to see.”
You could take the survey multiple times, but Marra says users would be better off just engaging with News Feed content in the ways mentioned above.
The moral of the story: With the exception of Facebook ads, you should be able to eliminate anything (or anyone) you don’t like from your Facebook News Feed. It requires you to put in a little effort, but hey, these digital newspapers aren’t going to write themselves.
Source: Mashable
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