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Stop Thinking Now! Facebook Knows What Is Most Important To You!

posted on September 21, 2011


Wow! What a relief! I have been having such a tough time lately trying to figure out what I think is important to me. It’s been vexing to say the least. But thankfully, Facebook has come along and to save me from not being able to make decisions for myself with its new Top Story feature. Here’s how the Facebook blog describes it

When you pick up a newspaper after not reading it for a week, the front page quickly clues you into the most interesting stories. In the past, News Feed hasn’t worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it’s tough to zero in on what matters most.

Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. They’re marked with an easy-to-spot blue corner.

Here is a picture of the visual cue that will help you not think about what is important to yourself because hey we’re just too busy to bother with that kind of stuff.

What is never even broached in this post is just HOW Facebook determines what you deem to be important. Will it be posts from your family first or is Facebook running an anti-family campaign and putting your close friends ahead of your family members? OK so I crossed the line but you get the point. It is reported that you can tell Facebook whether something was or wasn’t important but this exercise seems like more work than it’s worth because what’s important to someone is relative. It changes over time so do we have to keep updating Facebook so it can update us about what we want to be updated about?

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As with everything that is just released in the Internet space it is too early to tell much of anything but out of the gate this seems a bit odd. If you think it’s OK for Facebook to determine what is important to you, you may have bigger issues.

There are other new features that have been introduced. Fortunately Facebook is continuing its cute little habit of copying everything Google does these days. This has resulted in the following video description of Top Story and other features including the new real time ticker. Enjoy!



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  • Alex

    Okay, this is dumb. First, ‘Top Stories’. Honestly, this did essentially the same thing that they’re suggesting the new layout does. Except with the old layout, you could choose whether to look at most popular things vs newest things- a pretty smart feature actually. So why, Facebook? Honestly, introducing such an alienating change on the SAME DAY that your biggest competitor opens up its network’s doors is a terrible idea. Someone needs a pay deduction.

  • David

    I think it says a lot about fb in the first place when their “biggest competitor” just went public and is virtually no threat at all at this point.

  • Brian

    Good god, are they smoking crack? This looks awful!

  • http://facebook Kelli Wilkerson

    Can’t you just leave it alone? You keep changing everything no one is happy. People are getting messed up not understanding over this. You have something great and fun please just stop.

  • Lee

    It’s an interesting update. Information is laid out better, the real-time feed in the top-right is awesome. Go FB!

    • james theobald

      . what is simply retarded about this new feature that it marks YOUR OWN POSTS! duh!! and then it marks the ones you looked at as ‘from earlier’ as if i friggin didn’t know that items on the bottom of the page were from ‘earlier’. dunderheads at facebook are asleep at the wheel!

  • Liam

    Yay! Facebook takes friend stalking to a new and unprecedented level….and go them for forcing yet another unannounced, modification to their facebook page…..they fear Google+….which is hilarious. They fear them so much they copy everything that Google+ has done…..and Google+ still manages to do it better. Come on Facebook…..your a big company, the least you can do is bring some individuality to your page, or some flexibility to it for the users sake.

  • Jimmy Reilly

    Facebook is now deciding what people will HAVE to like. I remember a couple of other “giants” who traveled that highway, namely AOL and MySpace. No one is indispensable. Facebook has, in one fell swoop, gone from something I enjoy to something else I will now do without. It’s very dangerous for businesses to decide what is “important” to their customers, without ever actually asking for input from them.

    Another example of what happens when a bunch of idiot engineers don’t know when to stop fixing something that isn’t broken.

  • http://www.brickmarketing.com/social-marketing-company.htm Nick Stamoulis

    “What is never even broached in this post is just HOW Facebook determines what you deem to be important.”

    How does Facebook know who I want to see “important” news from? Is it based on the people I engage the most with? Is it people I’ve been friends with the longest? I think most users do a good job of filtering their own news feeds and this is an unnecessary update.

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