Mark Zuckerberg and his engineering team are always making tweaks to the Facebook News Feed to try and keep users coming back and spending more time on the site. Now some social networkers are seeing a new option that lets them pick particular friends and Pages that they’d like to give priority to.
Social Times has the details and a couple of screengrabs — a friendly animated puppy appears at the top of the screen prompting you to “see more of what you love” by picking out some of your favorite contacts. Facebook confirmed to Social Times that the test was real but it’s not certain that it’s going to be fully rolled out in the future.
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After all, giving users more control over the News Feed is a potentially dangerous move — Facebook’s own algorithm might be better than we are at deciding what’s interesting and what isn’t. If our favorite friends aren’t sharing much then we might log into Facebook less often.
Ever since the News Feed was introduced, Facebook has given users varying degrees of control over the people and organizations appearing in it. This new trial looks designed to try and make the whole process more straightforward and convenient for users on mobile.
In other Facebook news, the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook’s plan to host publishers’ content on its own platform is close to being realized. We reported on the rumors in March and the WSJ says the scheme is set to launch before the end of May.
