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Personally, I think Facebook would be broken if every message every person or group I'm connected to made it directly into my feed. The feed has been algorithmi

Personally, I think Facebook would be broken if every message every person or group I'm connected to made it directly into my feed. The feed has been algorithmic for a very long time and paid placement is neither a surprising nor nefarious input to that algorithm. Paid posts are clearly labeled and, even if paid, don't guarantee distribution volume, but do provide analytics. If you don't like the results you're getting, then don't pay for them. If you think that you can complain "But they are my fans! They belong to me! I deserve the right to be in their feeds" then be happy that Facebook is smarter than you: All those lovely fans would be gone in a heartbeat if Facebook didn't protect the advertisers from themselves. If you and all your advertising friends had it your way, you'd spam users until there were no users left to spam.

anonymoushn 14y ago
Is there a button available to users that will cause stories posted by pages and friends to actually show up in the news feed? It seems like there is no solution available on the receiving end.
- snprbob86 14y ago
  "Sort By: Most Recent" ?
  - dpatrick86 14y ago
    Nope. This worked for a while, however.
- scopendo 14y ago
  Not the simplest UI but: goto the friend's timeline. There should be a Friend button with a tick next to it. Hover over the button. On the pop-up menu the "Show in News Feed" option is probably already ticked. Once it is, choose Settings and then choose "All Updates" or whatever as appropriate.
- criley 14y ago
  You can control the level of access a friend or page has. You can set it from None - Some - Most - All of their posts.
- bradleyjg 14y ago
  If you make a friends group that includes all your friends it will post everything in chronological order with no in feed ads or crap from pages you've liked. It's far superior to the news feed IMO.
- ajross 14y ago
  AFAICT there is no solution on the receiving end. Your feed is going to be filtered or delayed by the Facebook gremlins and there's nothing you can do about it. The internal heuristics generally seem to get it right eventually: I see true friend and family posts with essentially random delays of sometimes up to 2-3 days, but I don't actually miss any (I don't think). I don't even bother trying to follow stuff I'm interested in on Facebook anymore. G+ does that sort of thing better anyway, at least for all of my interests.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
You're kind of just arguing that one scenario is better than another. Why not a third scenario?
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  They've made a distinction between 'friends' and 'fan' etc. pages. It seems logical that providing a full/friends-only/fan-page-only set of feeds would be a good way to manage spam, with the existing ability to unsubscribe from fan/friend pages. With all the resources and experience at their disposal, you're right, it's a bit ridiculous to suggest there's no way to avoid killing usability/usefulness without satisfying both users and companies.
  - cowholio4 14y ago
    Well they do have a specific feed for pages. https://www.facebook.com/pages/feed https://www.facebook.com/pages/feed
    - obviouslygreen 14y ago
      Well played, Trebek. Really, though, it's good that they have this. It'd be much better if this and a friends-only feed were the main way they distributed content.
    - tedks 14y ago
      Since I discovered that this existed, I've slowly stopped going anywhere else on Facebook. I care about new music from the bands I like on facebook far more than the mundane crap going on in my friends lives.
nilkn 14y ago
In an ideal product, this would just be left up to the user to decide. You should have control over your own news feed.
- robryan 14y ago
  Ideal for a small percentage of users, horrible in general. Facebook already has to many ever changing options related to privacy that people don't get. It already has things like lists and close friends people can use to control their feed further but don't get.
- tomasien 14y ago
  And it is. You can set all sorts of defaults. Facebook has just chosen the default default that tends to maximize engagement, THEN built a monetization platform on top of it.
guelo 14y ago
That is not what users expect. It is called a timeline for a reason. Twitter works that way and nobody thinks it's broken. If someone spams your timeline it's really easy to unfollow and solve the problem.
- tomasien 14y ago
  That's because nobody who uses Twitter meaningfully follows 1150 people. Or at least it's not the norm.
- snprbob86 14y ago
  > That is not what users expect. It is called a timeline for a reason. Is that reason because things are roughly sorted by time? It's a timeline of interesting events in the recent history of your friends and interests. Being a "timeline" doesn't mean that it has to include everything. Should a timeline of the history of the USA include every event in the history of China? Not if you actually want to succeed in communicating any subset of the information on the timeline effectively... People expect to sign in and see stuff about their friends. They don't expect to have to hand manage every single connection they ever make to decide who is or isn't worth paying attention to. > Twitter works that way and nobody thinks it's broken. 1) Twitter has extremely different use cases. 2) I think Twitter is horribly broken. I rely on non-broken external clients to sort and filter tweets; most high volume users do. > If someone spams your timeline it's really easy to unfollow and solve the problem. Again, Twitter is a totally different use case. I might not want to unfriend my Aunt, who loves me very much, but I sure as hell don't want to see her every little post. I don't interact with her messages, so Facebook stops showing them to me. That problem seems solved to me...
  - Semaphor 14y ago
    >Again, Twitter is a totally different use case. I might not want to unfriend my Aunt, who loves me very much, but I sure as hell don't want to see her every little post. I don't interact with her messages, so Facebook stops showing them to me. That problem seems solved to me... People whose FB posts annoy me, I can easily remove from my newsfeed without unfriending them or waiting for the algorithm to kick in.
ChrisCinelli 14y ago
Sure, but I would like to be able to set if I want by default see New feeds or Most recent post.Currently if I change to "SORT BY: MOST RECENT", it goes back to TOP STORIES after a day or so.
- cocoflunchy 14y ago
  Yeah this is really annoying, but fortunately there's a Chrome extension that takes care of it.

anonymoushn 14y ago

Is there a button available to users that will cause stories posted by pages and friends to actually show up in the news feed? It seems like there is no solution available on the receiving end.

snprbob86 14y ago
"Sort By: Most Recent" ?
- dpatrick86 14y ago
  Nope. This worked for a while, however.
scopendo 14y ago
Not the simplest UI but: goto the friend's timeline. There should be a Friend button with a tick next to it. Hover over the button. On the pop-up menu the "Show in News Feed" option is probably already ticked. Once it is, choose Settings and then choose "All Updates" or whatever as appropriate.
criley 14y ago
You can control the level of access a friend or page has. You can set it from None - Some - Most - All of their posts.
bradleyjg 14y ago
If you make a friends group that includes all your friends it will post everything in chronological order with no in feed ads or crap from pages you've liked. It's far superior to the news feed IMO.
ajross 14y ago
AFAICT there is no solution on the receiving end. Your feed is going to be filtered or delayed by the Facebook gremlins and there's nothing you can do about it. The internal heuristics generally seem to get it right eventually: I see true friend and family posts with essentially random delays of sometimes up to 2-3 days, but I don't actually miss any (I don't think). I don't even bother trying to follow stuff I'm interested in on Facebook anymore. G+ does that sort of thing better anyway, at least for all of my interests.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

You're kind of just arguing that one scenario is better than another. Why not a third scenario?

obviouslygreen 14y ago
They've made a distinction between 'friends' and 'fan' etc. pages. It seems logical that providing a full/friends-only/fan-page-only set of feeds would be a good way to manage spam, with the existing ability to unsubscribe from fan/friend pages. With all the resources and experience at their disposal, you're right, it's a bit ridiculous to suggest there's no way to avoid killing usability/usefulness without satisfying both users and companies.
- cowholio4 14y ago
  Well they do have a specific feed for pages. https://www.facebook.com/pages/feed https://www.facebook.com/pages/feed
  - obviouslygreen 14y ago
    Well played, Trebek. Really, though, it's good that they have this. It'd be much better if this and a friends-only feed were the main way they distributed content.
  - tedks 14y ago
    Since I discovered that this existed, I've slowly stopped going anywhere else on Facebook. I care about new music from the bands I like on facebook far more than the mundane crap going on in my friends lives.

nilkn 14y ago

In an ideal product, this would just be left up to the user to decide. You should have control over your own news feed.

robryan 14y ago
Ideal for a small percentage of users, horrible in general. Facebook already has to many ever changing options related to privacy that people don't get. It already has things like lists and close friends people can use to control their feed further but don't get.
tomasien 14y ago
And it is. You can set all sorts of defaults. Facebook has just chosen the default default that tends to maximize engagement, THEN built a monetization platform on top of it.

guelo 14y ago

That is not what users expect. It is called a timeline for a reason. Twitter works that way and nobody thinks it's broken. If someone spams your timeline it's really easy to unfollow and solve the problem.

tomasien 14y ago
That's because nobody who uses Twitter meaningfully follows 1150 people. Or at least it's not the norm.
snprbob86 14y ago
> That is not what users expect. It is called a timeline for a reason. Is that reason because things are roughly sorted by time? It's a timeline of interesting events in the recent history of your friends and interests. Being a "timeline" doesn't mean that it has to include everything. Should a timeline of the history of the USA include every event in the history of China? Not if you actually want to succeed in communicating any subset of the information on the timeline effectively... People expect to sign in and see stuff about their friends. They don't expect to have to hand manage every single connection they ever make to decide who is or isn't worth paying attention to. > Twitter works that way and nobody thinks it's broken. 1) Twitter has extremely different use cases. 2) I think Twitter is horribly broken. I rely on non-broken external clients to sort and filter tweets; most high volume users do. > If someone spams your timeline it's really easy to unfollow and solve the problem. Again, Twitter is a totally different use case. I might not want to unfriend my Aunt, who loves me very much, but I sure as hell don't want to see her every little post. I don't interact with her messages, so Facebook stops showing them to me. That problem seems solved to me...
- Semaphor 14y ago
  >Again, Twitter is a totally different use case. I might not want to unfriend my Aunt, who loves me very much, but I sure as hell don't want to see her every little post. I don't interact with her messages, so Facebook stops showing them to me. That problem seems solved to me... People whose FB posts annoy me, I can easily remove from my newsfeed without unfriending them or waiting for the algorithm to kick in.

ChrisCinelli 14y ago

Sure, but I would like to be able to set if I want by default see New feeds or Most recent post.Currently if I change to "SORT BY: MOST RECENT", it goes back to TOP STORIES after a day or so.

cocoflunchy 14y ago
Yeah this is really annoying, but fortunately there's a Chrome extension that takes care of it.