Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Facebook’s less cluttered friend list feeds are no more

By

Facebook’s focus on improving the news feed has a new fatality — the Friend List Feed. Facebook began shutting down the curated feeds that only included friends from a specific list on August 9. 

While the actual Friend Lists themselves aren’t changing, Facebook users can no longer have a news feed dedicated to just the friends on that list. Facebook calls the feature a “lesser-used” tool and said the shut down will let the company focus on improving the main news feed.

Recommended Videos

Hidden inside the menu on the Facebook App, Friend List Feeds allowed users to view only the posts from a specific group. Facebook automatically creates smart lists based on the information in your profile, like grouping people that list the same place of employment, and also lets you create your own lists. The list feeds were a sparse version of the news feed, containing only posts from those friends instead of all followed friends and Pages.

Facebook says the feature wasn’t very popular — features tucked inside Facebook’s menu and out of the usual news feed likely see less use on the platform. Friends lists will still be used for privacy settings, so you can choose to share something only with family or just among co-workers.

Facebook doesn’t have a very strong track record with creating separate news feeds — people tend to favor that traditional scrolling feed that collects everything in one spot. Earlier this year, the network abandoned a test that put friends and Pages in separate feeds. (Snapchat’s new design has a similar split, but the network says the change hasn’t changed the amount of time users spend on the platform and views on public Stories have increased.) The real-time feed without the algorithm, the ticker, was discontinued last year.

While the change eliminates separate friend feeds, a number of recent updates help users create a more custom experience in the news feed. New snooze features let users temporarily mute friends as well as keywords. 

This year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his goal was to improve meaningful interaction on the platform and decrease passive consumption. A new feature shared last week will track how much time fans spend on the platform, allowing them to set alerts after so much time has passed.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary K. Grigonis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
Bluesky barrels toward 1 million new sign-ups in a day
Bluesky social media app logo.

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone.

In a post on its main rival -- X (formerly Twitter) -- Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for iPhone and Android devices.

Read more
How to make a GIF from a YouTube video
woman sitting and using laptop

Sometimes, whether you're chatting with friends or posting on social media, words just aren't enough -- you need a GIF to fully convey your feelings. If there's a moment from a YouTube video that you want to snip into a GIF, the good news is that you don't need complex software to so it. There are now a bunch of ways to make a GIF from a YouTube video right in your browser.

If you want to use desktop software like Photoshop to make a GIF, then you'll need to download the YouTube video first before you can start making a GIF. However, if you don't want to go through that bother then there are several ways you can make a GIF right in your browser, without the need to download anything. That's ideal if you're working with a low-specced laptop or on a phone, as all the processing to make the GIF is done in the cloud rather than on your machine. With these options you can make quick and fun GIFs from YouTube videos in just a few minutes.
Use GIFs.com for great customization
Step 1: Find the YouTube video that you want to turn into a GIF (perhaps a NASA archive?) and copy its URL.

Read more
I paid Meta to ‘verify’ me — here’s what actually happened
An Instagram profile on an iPhone.

In the fall of 2023 I decided to do a little experiment in the height of the “blue check” hysteria. Twitter had shifted from verifying accounts based (more or less) on merit or importance and instead would let users pay for a blue checkmark. That obviously went (and still goes) badly. Meanwhile, Meta opened its own verification service earlier in the year, called Meta Verified.

Mostly aimed at “creators,” Meta Verified costs $15 a month and helps you “establish your account authenticity and help[s] your community know it’s the real us with a verified badge." It also gives you “proactive account protection” to help fight impersonation by (in part) requiring you to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also get direct account support “from a real person,” and exclusive features like stickers and stars.

Read more