No matter how many times I tell Facebook I want it to display the most recent updates from my friends first, it keeps reverting to highlighted stories. You can (attempt to) influence Facebook’s sorting by manually tagging stories, but if Facebook really wants to separate the wheat from the chaff I can think of a few ways to do it.
Some say there are only seven basic literary plots in all the stories in the world. Likewise, you can boil down most Facebook updates into a handful of types – and I think many users would love to be able to filter out at least five of those types.
Sports – Some of my friends are sports fans. I’m not. During any major sporting event, my social media feeds are flooded with play by play commentary, inane chanting (“Go $team!” for whatever value of $team) and other sports commentary. I know, some folks actually like sports. A way to filter out the sports noise would be a boon to the rest of us, though.
Entertainment “news” and award show commentary – The flip side of sports chatter is the commentary on awards shows and entertainment news. Some people may care what kind of outfits are being worn on the red carpet, or what the Kardashians are up to this week, but many more don’t. Give us a filter, please.
Politics – I’ll admit, I’m guilty of a lot of politics updates on Facebook. Some of my friends are up for the political discussions, though, and others aren’t. It’d be nifty if Facebook would let users who are less interested in politics just avoid the topic entirely. A minor twist on this: It’d be great if Facebook would have pity on the rest of the world and provided a filter to omit discussion of U.S. politics, especially presidential campaigns. We’re sorry world, really.
Monday/Friday posts – This should be relatively easy. Provide a filter for the “ugh, it’s Monday!” and “thank God it’s (almost) Friday!” posts.
Repost Requests – You might like sports, politics and award shows, but here’s a post type I bet most of ReadWriteWeb’s community could do without, the repost request. Also known as the “chain status,” some of Facebook’s users have carried forward the unwelcome tradition of chain emails and letters. You know, the “won’t you please repost this to show you care?” stuff.
Now, maybe you’re a sports, entertainment and political junkie that is having a terrible Monday and wants everyone to repost a chain status. What kind of updates would you dismiss if you had a way to sort them out completely?
