The Difference between Facebook Top News and the most Recent Newsfeed.

Most Facebook users think they see all their friends in the news feed and everything is okay, they think the one who are not visible are just not posting.

Well it might not be the case. Facebook gives you two choices to select how you’re a post from your friend could be visible to you. One is most recent and another is top news feed. The difference between the both of them is discussed in following article

1. Top News

If you haven’t logged onto Facebook in a while, your home page will default to this view.
Top News shows popular stories from your favorite friends and Pages, many of which have gained lots of attention since the last time you checked. In this view, you might find out about an old friend becoming engaged or see a hilarious video that your sister posted and that many of your friends liked
Since Top News is based on an algorithm, it uses factors such as how many friends are commenting on a post to aggregate content that you’ll find interesting. It displays stories based on their relevance, rather than in chronological order. More details about algorithm is given on next pages of the article

2. Most Recent

Switch over to the Most Recent view to see all updates from your friends. This view of News Feed also constantly refreshes itself so that you can catch the latest updates.

You might score a free treat by stumbling on a daily update from Sprinkles Cupcakes, meet up with a friend who posts an update about getting lunch at your favorite deli right now or be the first to find out that U2 concert tickets are on sale. Many of these are stories that you may not have seen in Top News.

The Most Recent view shows updates from as many as 250 friends and Facebook Pages. If you have more connections, you can adjust the number to have more friends and Pages appear in Most Recent by clicking “Edit Options” at the bottom of your News Feed.

Don’t forget: If there’s ever a person, Page or story type that you don’t care to see in either of your feeds, you can prevent them from appearing in your News Feed by hovering over the story and clicking the “Hide” button that shows up to the right. If you want to unhide them, click “Edit Options” at the bottom of your News Feed and choose the friends or Pages you want to see updates from again.

What is Algorithm? The Algorithm that Facebook Uses.

Facebook use algorithms, whether it be to select what is the top news, what friends to suggest or what photo memories to show but the most disturbing fact is that there is also an algorithm for the people who appear in your news feed whether it be in “Recent Post” or “Top News”. In fact that old friend you haven’t spoken in a while could not be appearing in your news feed when he/she is posting.

A MIT Research student studied the algorithms behavior for two months by observing without doing any testing but by simply doing business as usual. What he noticed was always seeing the same persons. They were the people he wanted to see but, he was missing some who were his favorite friends. So he checked on the Facebook application for iPhone and iPod Touch and there was no filter, no algorithm, he was seeing everyone. But on the website he was not getting any post of the people he was adding even after posting a message to their wall for the new friendship. So he asked himself what the algorithm was considering for making someone appear in your news feed and noticed some important key points.

First important key point is interaction! You must interact with that person, comment on his posts, like his post and yes this would imply visit his wall if you can’t see him in the news feed. The more interaction, the more it will make the algorithm understand that you are real friends and want to see each others posts in the news feed.

Second important thing to notice is that links are more valuable than status updates. Your posts are more likely to make it through the filter if you post links, videos and images. Facebook is a data mining source and you must remember that.

Third important factor is people who are stalking you will make you appear in their news feed but not the other way around. If you are stalking someone’s profile the algorithm will understand one thing, you want to see more of that person but unfortunately not the status updates, what you will get is photo memories in the upper right section of the page.

Fourth important key point is people you are tagged with in photos are also more likely to appear in your news feed as they are considered close friends. So a lot of pictures with you and X will make you see each others in the news feed and yes more photo memories.

Another factor is related to the chat. If you engage in a chat with someone the algorithm will remember you chatted with that person and will make that person a person you see in the left window of who is online. The algorithm selects who it will show you is online depending on with who you chatted and who are considered your best friends. So yes indeed chatting could increase the odds of getting both chatters seen in the news feed.

Also the search engine with Facebook has a algorithm. The closest friend will appear first if you type letter ‘A’ for example it will be your good friend Alex showing first, not Antoine that you haven’t spoken to in months. The closest you are to the person, the closer they are in the search results.

Now some days ago a friend tested the algorithm with someone he added recently. For two days they commented on each others posts by visiting walls, liked the posts and even sent some messages. After two days they couldn’t see each others posts in the news feed and t it was a surprise for both. You may now wonder how to get the control you want on who you can see in your newsfeed?
I will explain everything you need to know about getting some control over the algorithm.

How to Control Top News Settings

To change the top news setting (to change algorithm settings) follow the following steps

Go to bottom of your Facebook home page here you’ll see Edit Options. Click on it and this with bring you to the “News Feed Settings” window.
On the left you can manually add people you want to see in your news feed and on the right you can block people you don’t want to see in your news feed.

This allows you to see newsfeeds from persons of your choice

At the bottom of this window you can see “Maximum Number of Friends” this is a variable you can set yourself to let you allow how many posters you want to have in your news feed. Increase it to a very high value and you shall see more people automatically.

The interesting part thought is “View Recommended Friends”. If you open this menu it will show up the people you should be currently seeing or most likely to be seeing based on the algorithm highlighted in light blue. This is the actual suggestion for your news feed filter and probably is looking at what you are getting right now in your news feed. Now you can click on everyone you want to appear in your news feed and even the pages you want to appear in your news feed. One thing you must keep in mind is that the suggestion is not showing everyone if you have a lot of friends or pages so it is a wise idea to manually add in the previous menu the person you really want to see.

So this is jugad! for you, you now have more control over that Facebook algorithm! Now that you can see the one you want to see it’s time to interact with them, post interesting links, and also telling them about this should help too! Enjoy more control over your Facebook!