Yes, you read that right. Going against the grain of recent times, Facebook are giving their users an option that gives them more control over what they see in their newsfeed when they login.
Over the last few years Facebook have been heavily criticised for presuming to know what their users want to see on their newsfeed via their automated algorithm known as EdgeRank. EdgeRank tried its best, but more so than not, it got things completely wrong, and users complained of missing out on stories they wanted to see.
Well now you can tell Facebook directly who you want to give priority over when it comes to seeing new updates appear in your newsfeed via their brand new “See First” feature, which allows selected people/pages to appear at the TOP of your newsfeed when they make a new post.
It’s essentially the total opposite of the Unfollow feature, which allows you to stop seeing a person’s posts appear in your newsfeed, but don’t want to do anything as drastic as actually defriending them.
And just like the Unfollow option, Facebook users who you choose to “See First” are not notified that you’ve given them that priority (stalkers and exes rejoice.)
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Not only can you give this “See First” priority to people, but also to pages you are following too.
That’s potentially good (or at least intriguing) news for lowly pages like ours, who have been gradually pushed out of people’s newsfeeds in lieu of real people over the last few years. Now all we have to do is persuade our lovely followers to enable the “See First” option for us, as well as a few of their close friends and other favourite pages, and we may be able to warn people about scams and hoaxes through Facebook more effectively.
Go on, you know you want to.
But how do you do it? It couldn’t be simpler – navigate to the person or page you want to “See First” and click on the “Following” button (“Liked” button for pages) and select the “See First” option from the drop down menu. You can do it via your newsfeed too, by locating a post by the desired person or page, hover over the person/page name and hover over the following button to get the same drop down menu (clicking for mobile users.)
Give priority to your favourite pages. We’d love to be included 😉
You can manage the settings by clicking the down arrow on the top right and selecting News Feed Preferences on a desktop, or by tapping More in bottom right of the Facebook app and selecting News Feed Preferences for mobile.
Previous methods to gain more control over what you see on Facebook include using Interest Lists and enabling notifications for certain people. You can read our article on another 5 ways to help control your newsfeed here.
What do you think of the new feature? Let us know below.
