I don't use Facebook, apart from having set up a page which is really not much more than a repeater of what I post here. A case of, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."
I do know people who are Facebook users, from casual once-in-a-while types to serious addicts, who spend all their waking hours logged in. A friend, who falls midway on that scale, asked me if I have trouble with the Top Stories feature. "Top Stories?" I enquired. He gave me a rather disdainful look, but patiently explained about the news feed and the relatively recent change whereby Facebook highlights what it thinks are status updates of special note, and puts them in their own section above all the other updates. It was clear from his tone that this behaviour is something he despises, with a vengeance.
It turns out that ever since it was introduced, he has clicked the little blue triangle which denotes a 'Top Story' (an action which removes 'Top Story' status) on every single one which has appeared. Doing so briefly displays the following pop-up notice...
It seems the algorithm Facebook uses doesn't try very hard - he still regularly gets several status updates marked as Top Stories in his news feed, which all seem very similar to the ones he marks as 'ordinary', Perhaps the algorithm has self-esteem issues and has trouble accepting defeat. Or maybe it just goes something like this:
START: Mark random status update as 'Top Story'
If user removes Top Story status
Then pop up plausible acknowledgement
Goto START
I hope Diaspora* doesn't ever start to behave that way, but then the code is open source so the chances of it happening are practically nil. I like what I'm seeing there. Look me up if you join.
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