Facebook have just released an update which lets you customize your News Feed content by friend list.
The news feed is usually the first page you see on logging in and in my opinion, quite possibly the most valuable page on the site.
The new feature is a great way to now just see updates from just a certain set of friends rather than your ALL your friends. You can also filter by application feeds such as Friendfeed and any other applications which have feeds integrated within them.
After recently severely restricting who I add as friends on Facebook, I craved this feature as I desperately just wanted to see updates from Friends who I actually wanted to keep in touch with – rather than my “web buddies” who I was virtually in touch with all day every day via the various twitter-like services we all use. I would be delighted to see the option of setting a “default friend list” on Facebook, should save an awful lot of time when you’re just looking to see updates from a particular set of Friends.
Currently it is only your “news feed” which can filter by list but hopefully Facebook will incorporate the functionality in Status Updates, Photos and the Live Feed soon too.
This feature has been there for several weeks, if not months.
I agree with Rob. This feature has been available for a few months now. Since August 2008 to be specific
I use it all the time in order to list only news updates from real friends.
Here are a few articles about this feature.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/facebook-users-get-more-control-over-feeds/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10016150-36.html
this was there ever since the new FB came out.
This feature worked for me a few weeks ago (thanks for pointing it out!). But now it doesn’t show any drop downs. The arrow is just a link. My neighbor shows the same.
Is there a setting somewhere? FWIW I run IE and XP.
What I’d like to do is set one of the group feeds as my default instead of the overall news feed. I don’t want to go through the drop down each time. Anyone have success with that?
I agree with DJ. I am looking to accomplish the same thing.
I’m trying to find a way to hide every single wall posting I write, every bit of news about me from my gf. We’re facebook friends and I’m tired of explaining every old girlfriend or female friend commenting on something on my profile, or I theirs. She gets a notice in her feed and it’s just not cool. Any ideas on that?
Thanks man. Got a cleaner start page now.
I can hide my friends from Facebook News Feed
________________________
Hidden from News Feed
The following people are hidden from your News Feed. Click “Add to News Feed” to see their posts again.
But how can i put this friends back into News Feed again (for longer time)??
I’ve been away from Facebook for some time and upon coming back I hear a fairly consistent stream of comments on the ‘New look & feel of Facebook’ and the difficulty understanding the use of filters to maximize the experiemce. I Googled understanding Facebook Filters and rapidly came up with you. Any new insights?
Eric Cabot Steed
a.k.a. Singulus
OK, but here’s my big problem and one that I cannot seem to find an answer to. Very grateful if you know how-
I do not want all of my friends to read my posts to my friends universe- but in the new FB format, all of them are there for the world to see on their newsfeeds. It used to say “Liz commented on blah blah’s photo or post” and now it’s the whole comment-
It’s become an embarrassing thing for me, professionally and personally and makes me want to quit it all together.
Who can answer this problem for me? Tell me how to do it without the obvious answer of privately messaging everyone which seems take all the fun out of the application
I am not sure who I want to filter. Do I filter the people that I dont wantto see their feed? Or do I filter the pearson that I want the info to come through?
can anyone explain where to find this feature
http://www.facebook.com
I clicked on hide app (mafia Wars) mistakenly and now i am unable to unhide it. My News Feed settings in the home page consists only of friends and not app and hence i am unable to make any amendments there by i am unable to view any post of Mafia Wars on the homepage. I can only view it my friends and my profile but not on the home page. Its such a loss to loose out any post relating to this game.
Please advice
thanks
One of my friend hidden my home page. But i forget his name and email add. what can i do?
the newsfeed settings has 2 yabs, one for friends (mentioned above) and another one for applications. When you click on the one for applications, you can unhide any applicstion that you hid. Hope this helps :o)
I clicked on hide app (mafia Wars) mistakenly and now i am unable to unhide it. My News Feed settings in the home page consists only of friends and not app and hence i am unable to make any amendments there by i am unable to view any post of Mafia Wars on the homepage. I can only view it my friends and my profile but not on the home page. Its such a loss to loose out any post relating to this game.
Please advice
thanks
This feature was very helpful when you could show the friend lists on the left menu. Now with the redesign they are partially hidden (you have to click twice to find them on the left menu).
Also they have removed the option to see only the newsfeed from Pages you are a fan of. That was really helpful, Why go backwards in functionality?
I am glad the last comment gave me back my freedom to choose whom I want to see on my main page! I wish there was a way to set the default to a friend list, I this new design has hidden everything useful! FB is getting uglier every day! Now FB even publishes all crap to your home and shares whatever you like or say to every one like a nosy parker
man harkari mikonam na mitoonam chizi share konam dakhele fb na mitoonam photo up konam na inboxam baz mishe va na mitoonam comment bezaram :( bayad chikar konam???? hich fbiye digei ham nemitoone ba lap-tope man inkararo bokone:(rahnamai mikham daram divoone misham:((
David… How do you get those lists back? I clicked all over that left menu but all I can get is News Feed, not my custom lists. Thanks.
Actually, you USED to be able to do this. The NEW feature not only will randomly select people for you (hopefully it will show you some of the people you told it to show) then it will show you random posts from those people. If you ACTUALLY want to see what anyone is doing/posting you have to go visit their profile page. Epic Fail… Facebook…. Epic :/
Click on Friends (several lines below your photo on the left side). You'll see Find Friends, Status Update and the two moist recently edited friend lists.
Click on more to see the rest.
Click on any one of the friend lists to see the members' feed
I've used this feature for quite a while and love it. But now with the redesign I no longer have the option of changing the order of the lists on the left. I am hoping someone has figured out a way to sort those lists.
It's not a big deal but was a default –my favorite friends at the top of my home page options served as my default news feed–now it takes 2 or 3 clicks to get to that list and the default is once again the static news feed.
i wanted to make more room on the feed and bu mistake i removed a good friend from the feed.I went to the bottom the the feed page to the edit options and could not delete the name so as to put her back on…then to add insult to injury…on the left side of the box it said add names. I thought it meant to put them back, so i typed in her name…i think now that it meant to add more names to the delete from feed list…HELP……ANYONE OUT THERE???
the filter feature does not show up on my page
Application feed is broken. I try to filter my news feed using certain applications and it just presents a regular news feed.
Facebook has changed the wording from “is now friends with” which I could filter out, to “are now friends” which I cannot. But I am still NOT interested in that information. If I can't filter it out (which occupies huge amount of space and wasted time), I'll just quit Facebook – I consider this change an act of hostility to force unwanted information on users, and its non-correction immediately as VERY user-unfriendly.
I'll give it a couple days, and if those “are now friends” messages are not GONE, I'm out of here.
how do we do this???
How to restore apps which you've 'hidden' from your News Feed by mistake:
- Click upon 'News Feed' in the left margin.
- 'Top News' and 'Most Recent' (in the top/middle of the page) are the two ways to view your News Feed; you need to select 'Top News'.
- Scroll to the very bottom of the page; in the light blue bar there, you'll see 'Edit Options' on the right-hand side of that bar. Click upon it.
- Click upon “Add To News Feed” for any item(s) desired, then 'Close' the popup. You're done! :^)
I have a delimna. I think I deleted several friends. I thought I was just blocking their newsfeeds but then I could go back and unblock the newsfeeds of them. I thought then that they would not be aware I had done anything with their status. Now I would like to get in contact with them, but if I send a message to ask them to be a friend, wouldn't they know I had changed their status???How to get around this?
This Friend Filter function is not completely flawless– at least if you don’t want to offend anyone you’re doing this to, which I think is the whole point– that they don’t know you’ve filtered them.
Last night I found out I was being filtered by an acquaintance when I went to send a post to her wall. Right after I hit the send key, a yellow bar flashed that said “FRIEND FILTER” and then whisked the note away. I went to see if my comments had been entered with the others and they never did! So, while I know we’ve not great friends (just mere acquaintances), I can’t help but feel a bit hurt. It’s definitely offensive to actually know this has been done to you.
I recommend simply doing what others are recommending– hide the person’s posts. At least then their messages to your wall won’t be blocked or end up wherever they do.
Hey David, and anyone that is still using the filter. After you get to the one you wanna look at (say family or updates (which is a list where i added all the ppl i actually care about), if you copy the address, next time, if you just type that address it will go directly there.
my facebook is need to filter.how can i do?
Does anyone know how to hide my statues updates and feeds from people in my friends list? facebook.com/derrick503 please help!
Hi, Can your friends see the lists? I made a few but can’t erase them. I don’t want them to be offended if they see they are not on my ‘closest friends’ or distant ones list etc… I wish I gave more thought to the names!!! :(
How do I get a person I have hidden back? help an o.a.p.
the bad news is they seem to have removed the drag and drop feature of the friends list where you could drag the list you wanted to be your default feed on your fb homepage to the top of the left column.
the good news is you can filter out tons of application spam and other annoying junk messages, using a browser addon called FB Purity, it lets you customise which message types get displayed in your feed, lets you filter out keywords or phrases, lets you hide annoying things like “people you may know”, “sponsored box”, “get connected” etc
you can try it out here: http://www.fbpurity.com
not on the homepage/news feed, i’ve been using Facebook actively for the last few weeks – daily- and have been desperately wanting this feature…the only way you could filter your news feed before was to customize the content you would see and also you could ban certain people from appearing on your feed.
This feature definitely just appeared for me yesterday, however you have been able to customize your Friends list and they’re updates by clicking on “Friends” at the top and then selecting your friend list on the next page
Oh my god Zee! Bruv i was reading away when i saw “Aber” in the photo and thought… ” i wonder if this guy went to Aber”… i scroll back up and it’s you!
Smashed it bro, great article, take it easy!!!!
Sandro
I feel your pain…only I clicked undo before it was no longer an option and Mafia wars is still missing. I have complained in the help section but to no avail. Have not gotten one suggestion to reverse this. Mafia friends tell me o go to Edit options…as if I didn’t already look there a thousand and one times!!!