Which Facebook feed should I be reading: "Top News" or "Most Recent"?
Asked by
sferik (
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)
March 14th, 2010
I’m not even sure I understand the difference between the two. I assume “Most Recent” is a feed of all posts in reverse-chronological order (like Twitter), while “Top News” is a machine-curated feed of what Facebook thinks should be on top, taking into account chronology, but also my expressed preferences and past behavior.
Life is short. I don’t have time to read both feeds (arguably, I don’t have time for either). So, assuming my definitions are roughly correct (or feel free to correct them if you have better information), which one should I be reading?
A bit about me: I prefer my Twitter feed to my Facebook feed and typically read (or skim) every tweet. For me, Twitter has a noticeably higher signal-to-noise ratio, but many of the people I care about are only on Facebook. On Twitter, I follow fewer than 50 people. On Facebook, I have over 400 friends but I’m quick to hit the “Hide” button when someone gets noisy.
I’m aware that I could merge my Facebook and Twitter streams using something like FriendFeed, but that strikes me as the worst of all worlds (diluting the value of each).
…and don’t even get me started on Google Buzz.
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10 Answers
Most Recent is what I usually read, the only con is that you have to go through all of the bullshit groups people join and such.
Top News bothers me because it always just seems completely random, and I’m pretty sure it’s not even in chronological order. And you end up reading old stuff that might have already become obsolete.
I have to look at both to get most things. There’s a lot that just never makes it to me, though.
top news is all of the posts throughout the day that have been read and commented on the most .
and recent news are all things posted within the last couple of minutes, new posts and such.
i believe..
:D
@mrentropy, I know, The latest Facebook improvements suck, and have me ready to stop using it. I’m missing comments posted to my updates and instead have to wade through everything everyone does, or else cut them off completely. It’s a nightmare. I can’t even see what my own last status update is, and if anyone has commented on it, and forget about seeing wall-to-wall comments. It’s taking way too much work. I would never pay for it as a paid service in its current state.
@PandoraBoxx Oh! I thought the missing comments thing was just me. Glad it’s not, but not glad that it’s harder than ever to see what’s going on.
All the game updates kind of swamp things, too.
Most recent shows all posts from your friends.
Top news shows stuff Facebook thinks you will like, and stuff that is ‘popular’ (has a lot of comments and such).
I always read Most recent.
My use of Facebook has gone down markedly after all the changes. Just seems pointless and full of mostly games stuff now. I know you can cut out games, but new games keep appearing, and you get sick of it all.
What FuckBook has started doing to me now is giving my notifications 24 hours late. It is crap, if i want to see my messages i have to physically check my status’ for new comments and such. /rant.
I usually read the recent news.
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