Have you wondered why you haven’t seen anything from certain friends on Facebook in a while? Have you thought perhaps some friends just aren’t using Facebook any more? Maybe they are too busy? Have you been feeling like you’ve been seeing a lot of messages from a certain circle of people?
Guess what?
Facebook is filtering out many of your friends!
If you scroll down to the bottom of your NewsFeed and click the “Edit Options” button:
You will see the option “Show posts from”:
With the option set by default to “Friends and pages you interact with most“.
What this means is that if you don’t “Like” or “Comment” on updates from a friend or a Page over a certain period of time… then updates from those friends and pages will STOP appearing in your NewsFeed.
The fix is, of course, to simply change the option to “All of your friends and pages“.
To Be More Relevant?
I am guessing Facebook did this in order to help your NewsFeed “be the most relevant to you”. After all, if you are interacting with certain friends and pages, it would make sense to show you their posts. But in my mind…
this is what the “Top News” link at the top of your NewsFeed should be for.
However, this default option removes people from your “Most Recent” NewsFeed as well as the “Top News”.
Facebook is effectively disconnecting you from your friends, or, at least, the ones that don’t write much or with whom you don’t interact much.
The thing is that while I do interact with a certain subset of people, I enjoy reading updates from other people, particularly some who may not post updates all that often. I may not “Like” or “Comment” on them, but I enjoy reading them.
Screwing Page Owners Yet Again
Notice, too, that this is also for Facebook Pages. So if you are a company or organization that has invested time/energy/money in building out a Facebook Page… guess what? Many (most?) of the people who “Like” your Page are probably no longer seeing your updates! So it doesn’t matter if you have 1,000 people who like your page, because maybe only the 20 that have either “Liked” or “Commented” on a recent item on your page will still be seeing updates from the Page appearing in their NewsFeed.
Nice going, Facebook.
The only good news for Facebook Page owners, I guess, is that you do have the ability to send out an “update” via a Facebook message to everyone who “Likes” your page. Of course, it shows up as an “update” type of message and may be ignored by many. But at least Facebook Page owners have a way to notify “Likers” that they may be missing any updates.
Facebook’s Communication Black Hole
In typical Facebook style, I don’t remember ever hearing about this change in settings. Was this perhaps a subtle change in the new profile layout that was forced upon all of us?
Did I miss some notification? I only learned of this setting when I saw a Facebook Note that was shared by a friend (Evan Leibovitch) who still does show up in my NewsFeed.
Why wouldn’t Facebook default this the other way… and give me the option of enabling this filtering?
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You are absolutely right. I have stopped posting since many of my far away friends cant see me anymore anyway. And the zing has left facebook for me. Goodbuy
unbelievable..I had no idea but wondered what happened fan updates I wasn’t getting. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, Dan,
Thank you for sharing. I find it absurd that Facebook is filtering our friends and deciding with whom we may or may not interact. As you said, this is problematic for page owners since “fans” may no longer receive status updates. I found this post interesting, and I am going to write about this issue on my blog.
Best,
Anne
I’ve noticed that some friends and/or pages appear on my “News Feed” depending on the device/OS I am using.
A subtle way of unfriending your friends. Unbelievable! If I didn’t want to see updates from ALL of my friends, I’d simply remove them from my list. Or “Hide updates from XX”. How can THIS ever be a default setting?!
Thank you for this. It’s very informative and I’m sending a lot of people here to read it. Your post even inspired my next newsletter (hallelujah!).
Ahhhh…this explains a lot!
Thanks for switching the light on!
Facebook is so undemocratic – just does as it pleases!
Holy cow! This explains a lot. I’ve been wondering why: a) I never ever hear from certain people anymore, and b) I hardly get any responses anymore to my admittedly infrequent FB posts. What in the world were they thinking? Facebook has just brought its own enormous marketing engine to a grinding halt!
How can this be a default setting? I agree. The only explanation I can come up with is that they are trying really hard to get us to buy their advertising. It doesn’t make sense otherwise…not to me, anyway.
Thank you Alyson for mentioning this blog link in your newsletter today. Thank you Dan York for letting us all know that our friends are still there.
What a scam. FB is starting to feel like “Big Brother.” It is scary, yet I love seeing what happened in Egypt.
I was feeling very hurt because I thought friends had stopped being friends. Then I learned about this default setting. Isn’t the original goal and purpose of FaceBook to KEEP us connected?
How can we tell FB how unhappy we are with these news feed settings? This is an issue that needs to be heard…although I do agree that it may be part of some nefarious FB plan. Still, we have to try. Any suggestions? I don’t know a lot about FB, but I had just decided to establish a page for my business–and now that seems like a waste of time.
Wow, I was just about to kill my facebook account due to the fact I thought nobody really uses facebook any more. Seriously, what chemicals are the facebook designers on!?
Thanks for the update . Unfriending on Facebook seems bizarre.
thanks so much for this article dan! i’m new to FB but had a feeling something wasn’t right. i just posted your article on FB!
Thanks for the information. I found this from Alyson Stanfield and will also share this with my readers. I sensed something was wrong…but didn’t figure it out until I read this post.
Best Regards,
Harriete Estel Berman
Unbelievable. What a backwards way of setting it up! I use my News Feed to keep up with clients and do research on industry trends, etc. All this time, I thought that many weren’t posting. Then I realized that some had been, but they weren’t showing up. Thankfully, your post turned up in my search and now it’s all fixed. I can’t thank you enough. It may have taken weeks, if not years, for me to even notice that ridiculously placed options button! Thank you thank you, a million thank yous!!
Wow. Unbelievable. I really don’t need “Big Brother” deciding what I do and don’t see. The default should definitely not be for the limiting filter. Apparently I must have already changed the settings on my personal profile. On my business page I tried to change it and go this response: “Something went wrong. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can”.
I’m NOT happy they made this a default. Thanks…if not for you and for the tweet from @MassRealty that brought me here, I would not have known.
Cathy, Unfortunately Facebook has gone and changed the whole system around since the time I wrote this blog post. The best page to learn about how to control the items in your NewsFeed may now be: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=218728138156311
PING:
TITLE: My Top 9 Disruptive Conversations Blog Posts For Q1 2011 (They aren’t all from 2011)
BLOG NAME: Disruptive Conversations
With the end of a quarter of the year, I’m always intrigued to look back through Google Analytics and see what were really the top posts that people visited here on Disruptive Conversations. No matter what I may think are…
If only they could make my hidden posts from showing up time after time.
The “Edit Options” doesn’t give these choices any more because they have changed FB again! I’m still not getting updates from pages that I follow on my news feed. It is very frustrating.
Hi – I just realized this was happening today. I clicked on “edit options” but I don’t have a “Show Posts from…” option. Almost all of the pages I like (and many posts from friends) aren’t showing up in my newsfeed. Now what?