14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is testing a feature that should make the News Feed a lot more manageable, especially for those with a lot of Facebook friends. Users will be able to filter their feeds based on several criteria, to see just photos, game updates, or just the ones from a certain list.
The feature is now in testing with some Facebook users and will undoubtedly be rolled out to everyone eventually.
At the moment, Facebook users can choose between the Top News filter, itself a relatively recent addition to the News Feed, and Most Recent which simply lists all of the updates from friends, pages and apps in chronological order.
The Top News filter has done wonders for clearing up the clutter and you can now focus on the people you interact with the most, or the most important updates as chosen by Facebook.
The new filters greatly expand the capabilities. Apart from the Most Recent updates, you can also chose to view the entries from Games, Status Updates, Photos, Links, Pages as well as any lists you may have created.
Apart from making it easier to see the updates from a particular group of friends, you can also focus on the ones that interest you the most. If you select Status Updates, for example, the feed will only include the text entries.
Selecting Photos will enable you to see the latest pics from your friends and so on for the other filters. From the looks of it, the new feature should be a huge update to the News Filter.
If, even with the new Top News section, you've been feeling overwhelmed by the constant flow of information, the new filters should help. What's more, for the five percent of Facebook users that have created lists, you can now see the updates from just some of your friends, an option that was no longer available as lists were removed from the left sidebar.