4 Facebook Tips to Cut News Feed Noise
As Facebook green-lights more Timeline apps, expect your News Feed to get even more crowded. Here are four easy ways to bury the clutter and bring to the surface more of what's important to you.
CIO — You probably have a handful of Facebook friends who post too often, play too many games or share too many pictures. These well-intentioned friends end up flooding your News Feed with noise.
The bad news: As Facebook continues to roll out more new Timeline apps, your News Feed will likely get even more crowded. The good news: There are several quick and easy fixes to cut down on what you don't care about and surface the information that matters.
Here's a look at four ways you can tweak your Facebook settings to cut down on News Feed junk and make that feature more productive for you.
1. An Alternative to "Unfriending"
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If you have friends you want to remove from your Facebook like but think unfriending them is too harsh, there is an alternative: You can unsubscribe from them.
If you choose to unsubscribe from a friend, none of his or her Facebook updates will appear in your News Feed but you'll still be friends. They will still be able to contact you, and you can still contact them. That friend won't ever know that you've unsubscribed from them, which they could discover if you unfriend them.
To unsubscribe from a friend, visit his or her Facebook profile. On the top-right of his or her page, you'll see a series of buttons: Friends, Subscribed, Message or a gear icon. Click the Subscribed button to reveal a menu of options. To unsubscribe from your friend, click the "Unsubscribe" option.
You can also unsubscribe from friends right from your News Feed. To do so, hover over one of their posts and click the arrow for a drop-down menu. Here, you'll have the option to unsubscribe from your friend entirely or unsubscribe from just their status updates.
The other options in both of these menus are also worth noting. From both, you can choose the types of updates you want to see from your friend: "All Updates" if you're interested in everything; "Most Updates", which is the default setting and excludes some posts; and "Only Important," which will only show you updates such as changes in relationships, new jobs and location moves.
[Tips for Facebook Timeline Apps: Beware What You Share]
