I have a confession to make. A few times a week, I unfollow people who pollute my News Feed with too many photos of their baby or too many "funny" memes. I have no intention of unfriending these folks, but sometimes they need a timeout.
Today I tried to unsubscribe from someone who makes a lot of asinine posts that aren't relevant to me. Normally, I hide a person's post and Facebook gives me several options -- see just "important updates," choose certain kinds of updates to follow, or unfollow the person's updates completely.
But that didn't happen today. Instead, I hid a story from my feed and Facebook only gave me the option to unfriend this person:
Suddenly, it's harder for me to hide people from the News Feed. After fumbling around on this person's page, I was able to unfollow their posts by clicking the "Friends" button and unselecting "Show in News Feed."
Facebook routinely tests new features on groups of its users, and apparently I'm in that boat. I was also in Facebook's test group for its notification sounds.
"This is just a small test we are running," Facebook communications manager Meredith Chin told me when I asked about the change for unfollowing and unfriending people from News Feed.
While this is a test among select users, it's important to consider that Facebook is also rolling out its new and improved News Feed to users. (I don't have the new News Feed yet.) Facebook's revamped News Feed features larger photos and videos, and it no doubt wants to make further tweaks before it goes live for everyone. Perhaps the results of today's "test" will be incorporated into the new News Feed.
But let's hope I get changed back to the old way shortly. No doubt I'll have more unfollowing to do soon.
Chihuahua with his paws on his head via Shutterstock