Facebook Gives Users More Control Over What They See on News Feeds
Facebook can sometimes be a place to find interesting content and status updates from friends, but also be a breeding ground for boring, pointless, and just plain annoying. In an effort to provide users with more control over what they see and don’t on their News Feeds, Facebook released a dedicated settings page for News Feeds, making it easier for users to follow and unfollow people, Pages, and Groups.
Each story in users’ News Feeds will have additional options found under the arrow in the top right hand corner of each Facebook post. Users now have the option to see less from that person, page, or group. Or, users can choose to unfollow that person or group completely, without having to unfriend them.
Under News Feeds Settings, users will have the ability to view a summary of all the friends, pages, and groups they follow or have unfollowed in the past. Users can easily refollow at any time if they decide to do so from under the Settings option.
Also under News Feed Settings, users can view statistics that will show the most prominent people, pages, and groups seen within the last week.
As stated in Facebook’s official blog post, “News Feed is where you go to catch up on what’s happening with friends and find the content that matters to you. What you do in News Feed helps determine what you see in News Feed. You decide who you want to connect, and what Pages and public figures you want to follow.”
It’s no doubt that Facebook wants people to spend more time on its site. If users can easily control the clutter they don’t want to see on their News Feed, the more they will spend time scrolling through that they actually do want to see. Rumors are also surfacing that Facebook is looking to later on offer even more options for News Feeds, including the ability to regulate posts based on topic such as Technology, Breaking News, etc.
Facebook’s Updates Both Past and Future
Over the last several years, Facebook has regularly released News Feed updates that reflect a strong focus to improving the user experience. The company has also expanded its ad tools while slowly diminishing organic traffic for many company and business Pages in an effort to turnover some revenue for itself. And it looks like their efforts are working. Facebook currently holds the #2 spot behind Google in the digital ad selling market for 2014 so we can expect to see Facebook as a significant choice for online and mobile advertising spending.