July 09, 2015
Facebook unveiled several updates to its News Feed on Thursday that will give users greater control over whose content they want to see first and foremost.
The new tools, available only on Facebook's iOS app for now, can be accessed in the "more" section of the app's "News Feed preferences" menu.
Tops among the new features is 'See First,' which allows users to select the people and pages whose updates they want to be given priority in their News Feed. To keep tabs on selections, a star will appear next to the accounts chosen to be featured.
Other additions to the preferences menu include unfollowing people to hide posts, reconnecting with those who have been unfollowed and discovering new pages.
Facebook's News Feed, which launched in 2006, has undergone a major optimization effort since the company began a 2014 program calling on engineers, data scientists and users to provide feedback that helps improve the algorithm to deliver personalized streams of content, Time reports. Two offices, one in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the other in Menlo Park, California, house hundreds of people who sift through billions of likes, comments and clicks to assess how well the site places stories relative to user preferences.
“If you could rate everything that happened on Earth today that was published anywhere by any of your friends, any of your family, any news source…and then pick the 10 that were the most meaningful to know today, that would be a really cool service for us to build,” says Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer. “That is really what we aspire to have News Feed become.”
With the 'See First' feature, Facebook users will now be able to choose up to 30 friends and Pages they want to see positioned at the top of their News Feed, directly addressing what many critics complained was an algorithm that ignored user feedback.
