On Thursday, Facebook announced an update that comes with settings to help users prioritize friends and pages shown on their news feeds. Right now the feature is exclusive to iPhone users, but it will roll out to Android and desktop users in the near future.
Facebook’s latest update to improve news feeds
The social media website’s product manager, Jacob Frantz, shared more details about the update and what it means for users. News feeds are the heart of Facebook. They’re where users find the most recent updates from friends, companies and pages they follow.
The social site first shared tips to help users improve their news feeds last year. It now takes things one step further with tools that allow users to prioritize friends, unfollow pages or people who hide their posts, or reconnect with people the user previously un-followed. The update also makes it easy for users to find new people or pages to follow. This feature works by finding pages similar to pages the user previously liked.
Facebook also offers ways to manually edit news feeds
There are other ways Facebook users can clean up their news feeds. If a user does not like a specific post that showed up on the feed, he or she can click on the little arrow located on the upper right of the post where two options are presented: “Hide Post” or “Unfollow User.” The first option allows users to hide the specific post from their feed. It also offers the the user the choice to receive fewer updates from the user with the offending post. The latter option is used for removing all the other user’s posts from the news feed, but it doesn’t remove the user from their friends list.
Facebook hopes the update gives users more control of their news feed.
