Over the last few years, Facebook Inc has been slowly tweaking the way News Feed works to make it easier for users to see the content that actually interests them. That can be hard when some users have hundreds of “friends,” many of whom they probably wouldn’t even recognize if they passed them on the street.

One feature added last year gave users the ability to mute people’s status updates without having to unfriend them. This was a great way for users to avoid seeing hundreds of baby pictures or other content they did not care about, but there was still no good way to highlight the content they did want to see.

Now, Facebook is reportedly testing out a feature called “See First” that lets users choose friends or pages whose updates they want to see at the top of their News Feed as soon as they are posted.

“We 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,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

It is already possible to get alerted about updates from specific friends, but See First puts updates from tagged friends and pages at the top of your feed. This is somewhat similar to Twitter’s “While you were away” feature, which creates a recap of popular or important tweets that were posted since the last time you visited.

As with the muting ability, See First does not tell your friends that you have tagged them, so you do not have to worry about looking like a stalker or letting your other friends know who your favorites really are.

The new feature is currently in the testing phase, and there are no details about if or when it will be rolled out to Facebook’s general population.

Photo by Robert Scoble