Social media giant Facebook is rolling out improvements to its News Feed, the feature that allows users to construct a personalised stream of stories using the people and Pages they have connected with.
In late 2014, Facebook rolled out new ways of controlling what users could see in the News Feed feature. The latest announcement centres on a redesigned News Feed Preferences, with the aim of giving Facebook users a greater degree of control. A user looking to prioritise specific content is now able to select the friends and Pages they prefer to see at the top of their personalised News Feed.
In News Feed Preferences, a user should tap on the profile picture of a friend to view their posts first. Doing so will give them access to any stories shared by that friend since the user last visited Facebook. These stories will appear at the top of News Feed, indicated by a star in the top right of the post.
Another improvement being rolled out by Facebook is aimed at helping users to find new Pages from publishers, businesses and artists they may be interested in following. This feature uses Pages liked by a user in the past to make suggestions.
An updated design of tools launched by Facebook in the past enables users to view lists of the groups, Pages and top people that have been seen by a user in their own News Feed during the previous week. Users can also select a group, Page or friend to unfollow if they no longer wish to see updates posted. There is also the option for a user of seeing who they have unfollowed in the past and re-following them at any point if that is the intention.
News Feed Preferences are accessed by tapping on More, found at the bottom right hand corner of the mobile Facebook app. News Feed Preferences can be found under the Settings heading. Choices can be updated at any time.
The updates to Facebook News Feed have been rolled out for iOS with immediate effect, and the intention is to make the improvements available to Android and desktop users in the coming weeks.
