Facebook Tests New Feature That Lets Users Pick Which Friends Get Prioritized On News Feed

Obviously, we would much prefer getting updated with what is going on with a few select family members' and friends' lives than other Facebook friends out there. But sometimes this can be tricky especially when our News Feed is stuffed with posts from people we barely know, or worse, from Facebook accounts we barely even follow (or know we friended).

Fortunately, Facebook knows our struggle, and is now testing a new feature that will allow users to pick which friends or Facebook accounts will be prioritized when displayed on their News Feed. As reported by AdWeek, some users will be seeing a box at the top of their News Feed, inviting them to start choosing which of their Facebook friends and which pages they follow will get top billing on the News Feed. 

As many already know, the News Feed is the main page wherein Facebook users can see updates from all their Facebook friends. Whenever a friend of yours, or a page you subscribe to, updates their accounts by means of a post, photo, video, or link, that fresh new activity is displayed in the News Feed. Currently, the social media giant lets its users decide whether they prefer seeing the newest updates at the top of their News Feed or "Top Stories," which uses an algorithm to decide what might be the top stories in a particular user's network of Facebook contacts. 

To date, Facebook has already amassed about 1.4 billion monthly active users. Plus, about 936 million people use the social media platform on a daily basis. You can just imagine the volume of information that is hitting the News Feed every day, and for users with at least a hundred Facebook friends, navigating through a constantly updating News Feed page can be really time consuming. 

This is why this latest development can be a game changer for Facebook, and a good tool for users in managing what content are to be displayed in their News Feed. According to AdWeek's report, the new feature will not limit what is shown on the News Feed, but instead prioritize content from people that the users consider important. So, if a user has set his News Feed to show the most recent posts, the new feature may still place an older post from a preferred Facebook friend at the top. 

It is not certain yet if Facebook will make this new feature a permanent option for all Facebook users in the world. But for people who are tired of reading unimportant Facebook updates, they are hoping that it will.