[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.