Good news for iPhone users initially, but Android and desktop to come.  Last week Facebook gave back some control over who we see first in our Facebook News Feed via the Facebook app.   As I mentioned, at this stage its iPhone first, but the rest wont be far behind.

Your  News Feed is built up as a personalised stream from the Pages and people you connect to on Facebook.    The idea is that you see the stories that matter most to you based on Facebook’s algorithm which ranks your feed according to who you interact with most and the type of content you tend to like, comment or share.

You now have the ability to prioritise the content based on your favourites.

Here’s how to do it.

Open your Facebook app on your iPhone (make sure you have the latest version of the app though!).   Click on MORE (the three little lines on the bottom right) and scroll all the way down to the SETTINGS section.    There you will see NEWS FEED PREFERENCES.

Start with the Blue star to prioritise who you see first.  (You will still get other content in your newsfeed but the latest posts of these priorities will show in your feed first).  (Note my example is only for the purposes of this and you cant change the order which connections appear (I would have loved to be able to sort alphabetically!).    You will see the words SEE FIRST appear under their names along with the blue star.

Note this is different from CLOSE friends settings.   With Close friends you receive notifications when they post.  With See First you see posts from these people in your feed when you first open your app.

You can choose to unfollow people to hide post, reconnect with anyone you have unfollowed (they wont know).  Remember if you do this that you will need to go and look for their latest posts.

There is also an option to discover new pages.  For me lots of  very disconnected pages appeared but that might be because working in the field I do so many searches and research for clients that poor old Facebook probably can’t decide what I like!

That’s it.   Simple and easy but giving you some control back.

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