Mark Zuckerberg and the friendly team at Facebook Inc., like nothing more than screwing with news feeds to better make money, but for once they might actually be giving some power back to users.

A new test being undertaken by the social networking giant is said to allow Facebook users to pick particular friends and Pages that they’d like to give priority to in their feeds.

According to Social Times who reported the news first:

“For some mobile users, a box with an animated puppy shows up, prompting the user to ‘See more of what you love.’

“From there, it leads to a screen (below) with bubbles of all of the friends and pages with whom that person has connected. People can select which pages and friends they’d like prioritized above the algorithm.”

Facebook confirmed the test, telling the site that they “are always exploring new ways to improve the Facebook experience, and are currently running a small test of a feature that lets you indicate that you’d like to see posts from a specific person or Page at the top of your News Feed.”

Power to the people

Interestingly some coverage of the news suggest that the move is “a gamble,” and “potentially dangerous.”

The argument there goes that Facebook’s newsfeed has been tweaked to give users what they want, the people be damned that they themselves may know what’s best for them.

What dross.

Longer term Facebook users may remember when Facebook use to offer a raw feed that included the latest posts from all your friends, as opposed to just the ones they think you want to see as they do now.

Facebook has been all the poorer for this change, and in many ways its selective “picking what it thinks you want to see” algorithm makes Facebook bland as it restricts the diversity of content a raw feed could and use to provide; it’s a circlejerk of the same people in your stream because it primarily presents friends with content you’ve previously liked.

Change here can only be a positive, and all power to the people.

photo credit: DSC_0076.JPG via photopin (license)