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Facebook Launches News Feed Filters – First Look
July 31st, 2008
| By Justin Smith | 19 Comments » |
It’s been nearly two years since Facebook’s News Feed launched. Tonight, Facebook is turning on the first major change to the News Feed user experience: News Feed filters.
News Feed filters are tabs at the top of the News Feed that allow you to view stories of only one type. This is a great way to consume feed stories more efficiently.
Seen only briefly once before during Mark Zuckerberg’s f8 keynote presentation, the new feed filters are now live on the Facebook redesign beta site at www.new.facebook.com. Here’s what they look like:
Currently, the following Feed filters are available:
- Top Stories (what the News Feed has always shown)
- Status Updates
- Photos
- Posted Items
Each tab filters your friends’ stories as you would expect. Absent from the list of filters is the “All Stories” tab that Zuckerberg demo’d at f8 – he described that view as “a log of everything” your friends have done.
Also absent from the list of filters are Facebook Platform applications (collectively or individually). While some applications publish low quality stories that most friends would just assume never see, many applications actually publish interesting stories that their friends want to monitor. Many developers want to see more application discovery in the News Feed, and News Feed filters could be a great way for Facebook to give apps more air-time.
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July 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am
I love it! A great improvement.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:17 am
Ooooh, yippeee!! I can’t wait to play with this new feature. This is fantastic news!! The juice really is in the News Feeds and I’m hoping we’ll keep seeing more and more improvements in this area from FB.
Cheers,
Mari
@marismith
July 31st, 2008 at 2:42 am
I’d really love the All Stories tab. Newsfeed feels slow as it doesn’t update itself enough. Or maybe I just spend too long on the site…
July 31st, 2008 at 4:35 am
[...] is definitely great new that today Facebook is rolling out the filters for the News Feed to improve our experience with the feature of the social network. True, I [...]
July 31st, 2008 at 5:08 am
I find it a great improvement myself – especially in the way I can now browse all the latests tweets from my friends in their status updates. So in general I think this update allows users to consume more information. But I support you that the updates from various apps should really be introduced into the News Feed eventually.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:10 am
Mari,
Still no changes for Canadians though – any idea when that will happen?
It’s strange all this talk about FB changes and I can’t see it in action – I feel like we are on different planets.
Matthew
http://twitter.com/matthewSBOC
July 31st, 2008 at 6:52 am
Seconded Robbie. Great feature!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:54 am
This is a great idea, although I do believe Multiply.com has had this for quite a while. It might be new to Facebook, but Multiply is way ahead of the game. Im an avid user of Multiply, and having once used Facebook without satisfying results, it seems theyre trying to conform to what others have to improve their own product.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:05 am
@matthew hunt
I’m in Montreal and as of now it works. I actually only noticed it an hour or two ago in between my work tasks. I’m not even sure if it was on when I opened it this morning but one thing for sure it is working now.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:10 am
Still no way to consume Facebook news feeds in RSS readers?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:07 am
[...] eyes. There’s no way to add a tab for applications — and some applications, as Justin Smith points out, are quite popular and have “stories” that users might want to be able to quickly sort [...]
July 31st, 2008 at 11:48 am
I’d really really like to see “All Stories”. That would make me very happy!
July 31st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
And “all stories” tab would be nice.
But they took the status updates out of the box along the right-hand side; now you have to click on “status updates” at the top to see them. This is definitely NOT a step forward in usability, going from “always seeing the latest updates” to “have to click to see the latest updates”.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
[...] @ Inside Facebook blog also has some [...]
August 1st, 2008 at 12:26 am
[...] this is the first time when the social network is releasing major update for its News Feed. The ‘News Feed Filters’ tab has been introduced. The tab which is now live on the new redesigned Facebook, was discussed [...]
August 6th, 2008 at 3:14 am
[...] Facebook enables filtering for newsfeed Micro controls over newsfeed granularity are now provided to users, to tweek, tune, and refine a newsfeed. While most users won’t use this feature, it’s [...]
October 21st, 2009 at 8:01 am
[...] selection of friends’ most interesting activity on the site, Facebook since made a series of progressive changes to the News Feed in 2008 and early 2009 that by today have made it purely a [...]
October 25th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
can’t write in my whats on my mund box since the change please help me fix this please…..
November 24th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
For the past week, I haven’t been able to use my facebook acct. It’s almost like there is a filter keeping me from updating status or commenting. Please help