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Facebook Now Lets You Filter Your News Feed By Friend List

By Zee
January 23, 2009
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Facebook Now Lets You Filter Your News Feed By Friend ListFacebook 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.

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  • 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?
  • Facebook Now Lets You Filter Your News Feed By Friend List http://bit.ly/11WxJ
  • This is inspiring/insane/funny/boring: http://tinyurl.com/brwvd6
  • Facebook Now Lets You Filter Your News Feed By Friend List - The ...: Want to add social features to your site l.. http://tinyurl.com/brwvd6
  • Facebook Now Lets You Filter Your News Feed By Friend List http://bit.ly/11WxJ
  • Rob
    This feature has been there for several weeks, if not months.
  • 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
  • Sandro
    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
  • Roy
    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-u...
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10016150-36.html
  • Facebook now lets you filter your news feed by friend list http://is.gd/hbrC
  • this was there ever since the new FB came out.
  • Helpful new FaceBook feature description: http://tinyurl.com/brwvd6
  • Filter Facebook by friend lists http://tinyurl.com/brwvd6
  • J-bone
    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?
  • Daniel O
    I agree with DJ. I am looking to accomplish the same thing.
  • balths
    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.
  • miha
    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
  • liz
    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
  • Michelo
    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?
  • mike
    can anyone explain where to find this feature
  • Anonymous
  • a mafia war player
    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
  • annoyed with facebook
    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!!!
  • mamun khan
    One of my friend hidden my home page. But i forget his name and email add. what can i do?
  • mamun khan
    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
  • Monique
    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)
  • dashesy
    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:((
  • t-bone
    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.
  • 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
  • craigrowland
    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 :/
  • Joan Cardagan
    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.
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