Facebook adds Recent Stories First option to News Feed
Less than two months ago, Facebook started rolling out an updated News Feed as well as the real-time Ticker feed. Now it's adding a small change to the former in order to let you once again see recent stories in reverse chronological order. Here's how I described the latest changes to the News Feed when they were first announced:
First of all, the News Feed will no longer show updates in just chronological order, like it has in the past. If you haven't visited Facebook in a week, your News Feed will feature a summary of top stories (more important photos and statuses posted while you've been away, marked with a blue corner). If you've already visited several times that day, your News Feed will feature more recent stories, and photos will take up more space while you're scrolling through. In short, Facebook is merging the Most Recent and Top Stories into a single feed.
Not everyone likes this merge, and as with any change to the social network, there was a huge uproar. Contrary to popular belief, Facebook does listen to feedback and acts on it if enough users are unhappy.
As a result, Facebook has announced it is adding a new Sort drop-down menu with two options: Highlighted Stories First and Recent Stories First. The former is what your current News Feed looks like now while the latter will let you resort your News Feed to make it look like it did before this update. Either way, the same number of stories will be shown (you can always see more in the Ticker) – they'll just be shown in a different order.
"Now you have a new way of sorting your News Feed: most recent stories first," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "You can also continue to view highlighted stories first, followed by recent stories, like what you see today. If you don't have the updates to News Feed yet, you can expect to see them over the coming weeks as the rollout continues."
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