[jfruh]

I hate to be one of those people constantly whinging about Facebook redesigns, but ... can someone explain why Facebook seems to intent on "curating" your stream for you, based on priorities that aren't clear? I know a lot of people probably enjoy having some definition of "highlights" stuck at top, but many of us like going through the whole thing to see what all our friends are up to, until you get to a status update you recognize, which means that you know you're done looking. What does FB lose by taking away the ability to see a simple chronological list of updates? What do they gain by foregrounding the posts that they think are important?

Edited to add: Several people replied to me saying "But some of us DON'T want to see a big chronological list!" Well, yeah, I said in my original post that I realized this. And in fact you already had the option to see only "Top news" instead of "All posts." What bugs me is the one-size-fits-all version that has now been imposed on everybody. Why is FB allergic to allowing different users to interact with their data in the way those users want?

[primigenus]

My interpretation is that Facebook is more valuable if the content you see when you interact with it is more useful to you. Facebook is about connecting you with family and friends, and that's easier to do if you see valuable content more frequently than low-value content (which might pop up in a simple chronological stream).

I think this way they're trying to improve the "keep-alive" of relationships between you and people on your friend lists by showing you more valuable content, which in turn will lead to higher engagement (eg. likes/comments/etc), which in turns keeps relationships going through interactions, which in turn keeps you coming back to Facebook. And that obviously is a good thing for Facebook.

[jackseviltwin]

The problem is people with many hundreds or thousands of friends. At that point, your feed gets too unwieldy to read chronologically, or it might scroll by so quickly that in the time you catch up, dozens more have been fed in at the top. Facebook is trying to just show you what they think you're interested in the most. Sadly, they aren't doing a great job of it. I agree that they should at bring back the "Most Recent" feed for those of us who have a manageable friend count.

[gfodor]

Because 'going through the whole thing' is nearly impossible for some people, who either log on spargingly or have a lot of friends. Additionally, since Facebook is full of relationships that are less than actual 'friends', a lot of people have complained for years about the quality of the posts. I think they must have realized their algorithms needed a stronger signal than what they had, and this UI is a way to get that data.

[jfruh]

But this option already existed (you could choose "top stories" instead of "latest stories"). What annoys me is imposing a one-size-fits-all version on everybody.

[danso]

I often wonder the opposite: why do FB users care about seeing the updates of just anyone in their friend list?

But I'm thinking along the lines of a more cynical user, as in, I realize FB is a huge timesuck, I've probably friended more people than I consider friends in real life, I should get off the computer more, etc etc., and so I appreciate the way that FB shows me the updates of people who I'm most interested in.

Does it bother me that I don't know the criteria? Not really, in the same way that I'm not bothered that I don't know the details of PageRank. But I'm guessing FB makes its judgment based on how much I chat with a certain person, interact with their updates and walls, and browse/stalk their profile. If that's the case, their "Top Updates" has been right on the mark.

I end up spending less time than I have to to see the "news" that I'm most interested in. If I log onto FB later and see that the Top UPdates largely remain the same, then I am satisfied to log back out for the day. At the same time, I'm more engaged with Facebook as a user because I'm always seeing things that I care about, even if some of them are half a day old. Strangely, this curation saves me time from FB yet fulfills FB's mission to keep me on its site, as I'd be less enthusiastic in coming back of 7 out of 10 items in my default news feed were drek.

And yes, you can say that I should maintain my friend list better and silence/unfriend the users that I don't care about...but if FB does a good job of that (the silencing part) without me needing to go through another options menu, I don't have any complaints.

[bconway]

why do FB users care about seeing the updates of just anyone in their friend list?

If the things they're saying aren't (regularly) of value, they wouldn't be on my list.

[danso]

In an ideal world, yes. But I suspect even the most particular Facebook users have FB-friended people who turn out to have a much more annoying online persona, i.e. anyone who hasn't grokked what oversharing on the Internet means.

In cases where de-friending a person has no real-life consequences (i.e. they're not a close friend, either in proximity or emotionally), then FB's curation saves you a little of that tedious cleanup. In cases where it is awkward to defriend someone because you have a real-life connection to them, the curation may save you from having to manually silence their updates.

I can only think of one case where I had to manually perform these silencing actions, and it was with a friend who is a good real life friend and who I communicate on FB regularly, but who has decided to make his wall a constant stream of his political beliefs. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the convenience that FB's curation performs in auto-ignoring the people that I tend to ignore (but not necessarily dislike).

There's one more important aspect to this. Sometimes, a FB friend who isn't normally in your Top feed will appear because something he/she posted has gotten a lot of activity/likes. This is not so dissimilar to a place like HN, where the well-liked submissions of people I've never met are prominently visible to me. This kind of social aggregation would not happen in a situation where you've decided to shut out all people that you've decided a priori have and will have nothing of interest to you.

[rhizome]

What do they gain by foregrounding the posts that they think are important?

Control. Facebook is free, so it IS NOT FOR YOU. It's for advertisers. The fact that there is little advertising on FB at the moment does not disprove this. Wait until the Super Bowl or the US Presidential election next year.

It's the long game.

UPD: Ah, the silent downvote.