Facebook testing a “hide from timeline” option for posts

When you post something like a status update or photo, it will come as no surprise to you that that post is then published onto your timeline, becoming the latest entry into the archive of your Facebook life.

And for the next 24 hours or so, that post is likely to appear in the newsfeeds of your Facebook brethren. Not all of them, but certainly the ones you interact with the most.

However, Facebook are testing a solution that will allow Facebook users to post content that will still appear on the newsfeeds of their Facebook friends, but skip the formality of having to published on their timeline.

Currently in a testing beta stage (meaning it may never actually get released to the public) the option provides a checkbox (which you can see below) that – once checked – will allow the user to post the content without it ever having to grace the user’s timeline.

It’s an option that is geared towards posts that would feel out of place being permanently archived on someone’s timeline. For example a quick question to Facebook friends or a shout-out about an event – such posts that would soon be outdated and rendered irrelevant after a short passage of time. Basically, any content that users wouldn’t want published on their timeline permanently (or at least until they deleted it.)

It resembles the business model of SnapChat where users can send messages to one another which are then deleted after a certain period of time. In this case though, Facebook news-feed only posts won’t actually be deleted, but they’ll inevitably stop appearing on friends timelines when they become hidden by the flurry of new content that is constantly being posted onto the social networking site.

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It may sound like an interesting option, but users can actually do this already, albeit not at the time of posting the content. Any user can already navigate to their timeline and select the ‘Hide From Timeline’ option on any content they post, which essentially has the same effect.

Facebook users be warned though – this doesn’t mean you can lower those social media inhibitions and post embarrassing content and get away with it. As we said before, these posts are not deleted, and are searchable by other Facebook users, as well as anyone willing to dig deep enough down their newsfeed to reach older posts. Embarrassing, illegal or otherwise inappropriate posts still have no place on Facebook of the Internet as a whole.

Would you use such a feature? Let us know.