Facebook is tweaking its News Feed again, with yet another update that gives users more control over what they see in their streams. This time, Facebookers can choose which friends' and brands' updates they want to see first.
"We rank [items in] your news feed with the goal that whether you have five seconds or five minutes, you're seeing the best of what's in your feed," Greg Marra, product manager at Facebook, told NBC News in an interview. "We know we don't always get that perfect right now."
The new "see first" feature is part of a revamped batch of preference controls rolling out to Apple iOS users July 9 and to Android and desktop over the next several weeks.
In addition to "see first," Facebook is also adding a feature to help people discover new brand pages as well as re-designing the existing feature that lets people un-follow other users' posts without un-friending them.
Marra said Facebook created the new controls after soliciting direct feedback from users starting in November 2014, in an update that allowed users to ask to see fewer updates from a certain person or page.
"This is the type of thing you'll continue to see us focus on," Marra told NBC News. "How can we give people control to get more or less from their chosen sources? And how can we get feedback directly from people about what matters to them?"
