When Facebook makes a change, the world loses its mind. The latest uproar happened just over a month ago when the newsfeed was altered. In the top right corner there is a small feed of everything your friends are doing. It annoys many people, but the point of it is that it finally takes the small, innocuous changes are out of the primary view, yet still available.

The biggest change was the primary newsfeed. It has always been set up chronologically. The change incorporated a sense of importance to certain posts and, subsequently, posts that were similar. The reason this upset users was because they were not happy having Facebook decide what was important and what was not, especially when people log in for just a few moments and don’t to sift through older, “more important” posts to get to the new stuff. On the top left corner of every post, is a small triangle that can be clicked to mark each posts as important or not. Facebook touted this as granular control, but users saw it as ahassle and an extra step to get thing back to the way they’ve always been anyway.

Facebook does listen to its users and makes changes to accomodate - where they can. Today they have included a new button at the top of the newsfeed. It is not up to each person how the stories in their feed are sorted. It can be left alone and be sorted by importance. That is the choice “Highlighted Stories First.” If you like if the old way, choose “Recent Stories First.” Things will be back to the way they were before the change.Like any other change on Facebook or other utility-like sites, we continue to use it despite our opinion of changes. We need the service more than we dislike the updates. Being out of touch and off the Facebook grid has a greater negative impact than mis-ordered posts. Eventually we adapt and, more often than not, forget what the old version even looked like anyway.

You can still highlight things and I strongly suggest you do. This serves 2 purposes. The first is you can find the important items by switching the setting. So, by changing to Highlighted Stories First you can see everything that’s important and then go back to recent. Also, there is no guarantee that this is forever (the choice I mean). Facebook may very well dump the ability to choose at some point. If you highlight all the things that are important, Facebook’s measurement algorithm will have a much clearer picture of what is important to you and be able to address that. You’ll get targeted posts instead of random ones. Take control and customize your experience.

I will be changing back to “Recent Stories First.” I liked the change and supported it, but given the choice, I like them sorted chronologically. For me it is about the fact that I’m in front of Facebook, literally, all day long. I see the important stories over and over again while scrolling to find new items. They were important in the morning, but don’t stay important all day long. 

I like that they made the change and are showing an effort to take users’ concerns into consideration.