How to Declutter Your Facebook News Feed

Learning how to declutter your facebook news feed is critical to getting the most out of your Facebook experience. Many people enjoy using Facebook for social networking and other uses (See: Useful Facebook Features Besides Social Networking); however, they may not realize that the facebook news feed can be customized to get the most out of the Facebook experience. Customizing the updates to your Facebook News Feed will allow you to declutter the feed, so you only receive timely updates from Facebook Friends and things that you have Liked on Facebook, with an occasional Facebook ad thrown in, but there's nothing you can do to get rid of the advertising clutter.

If you do not care to hear every update from some of your Facebook Friends, you can change the types of updates you receive from various Facebook Friends through the Facebook News Feed. This will reduce the amount of updates you will receive through the Facebook News Feed, and will leave the more pertinent updates that you would like to read.

There are two ways to change the types of updates you receive from Facebook Friends to declutter your Facebook News Feed:

1) Next time you receive an update from a friend in your Facebook News Feed, hover over the upper right portion of the update. You will see an arrow that, when selected, will give you a drop down menu that will provide choices regarding which updates you would like to receive from this friend in the future (see below for instructions).

2) Go to the Facebook profile page for the Facebook Friend that you would like to alter updates from, then hover over the Subscribed button located in the upper right portion of their profile page. You will see a drop down menu that will provide choices regarding which updates you would like to receive from this friend in the future (see below for instructions).

Either way that you approach it, you will be provided three choices to change the types of updates you receive from the Facebook Friend:

• Select Only Important to see only important updates (not sure how Facebook determines what important updates are). This will mean that you will rarely see updates from the friend in your Facebook News Feed.
• Select Most Updates to see a lot of updates, but not all updates. This will mean that you will see updates from the friend in your Facebook News Feed, just not every single update (Facebook has some sort of algorithm for eliminating updates that they consider trivial).
• Keep All Updates selected, if you decide that you want to see everything that your Facebook Friend posts or likes on Facebook.

It is certainly fun to let the world know what you “like” by selecting the Like button for a variety of commercial entities that have a presence on Facebook. Advertisers love it, since they know what you like, and it also provides your Facebook Friends information about what you like.

Once you select the Like button on a Facebook page, you will start seeing updates posted to that page in your Facebook News Feed. While it can be very useful to have information about things you Like pushed to you through the Facebook News Feed, it can also clutter up the Facebook News Feed with a lot of extraneous information that does not interest you. For example, I selected the Like button on The Weather Channel page on Facebook, but I have found that I do not need or want to see every Weather Channel post through my Facebook News Feed, many of which are regarding weather in other parts of the country.

Facebook gives you the power to Like something, and then change the setting in your Facebook News Feed for the thing that you liked, so you do not receive updates via your Facebook News Feed. Removing something you Like from your Facebook News Feed is done in a similar manner as changing the types of updates you receive from a Facebook Friend.

Next time you receive an update from the page that you Like in your Facebook News Feed, hover over the upper right portion of the update. You will see an arrow that, when selected, will give you drop down menu that will provide choices regarding what to do with the current update and future updates. To prevent future updates to your Facebook News Feed from the page that you Like, select Hide All By < the page that you Like >. That is it! After the change, you will still Like it, but your Facebook News Feed will no longer be cluttered with information that you do not wish to receive.

The goal of decluttering your Facebook News Feed is to ultimately make the Facebook experience a better one. Facebook loses its appeal when so much information is presented in your Facebook News Feed that you can no longer keep up with it. New Facebook users may not find this to be a problem, but as you make a lot of Facebook Friends and start to hit the Like button on a lot of Facebook pages, you will quickly see your Facebook News Feed cluttered up with a torrent of updates, some of which you want to read and some of which you do not want to see.

Take control of your Facebook News Feed to make it more useful by decluttering it. Changes you make regarding what you want to see in your Facebook News Feed can be undone at any time in the future by changing your Facebook Friend and Like preferences.