Facebook Fixed Page Walls

Last night, Facebook Pages posted this notice:

We have made updates to the Page Wall, which you will begin to see in the coming hours. You can choose to filter Posts by the Page or from everyone (both Fans and Page). People can filter posts from everyone by Top Posts, which shows most interesting stories, or Most Recent, which shows posts in chronological order. Fans can switch between views by toggling the viewing option in the top right corner of the page wall.

This can only mean that Facebook read my last blog post. Or, more likely, that the voices of Page administrators ’round the world were heard.

When recent updates to Pages affected the way posts appeared to users, administrators were left to make a decision. Should Pages show everyone’s posts, in the order that Facebook determined was the most engaging for each individual user?  Or should only the Page’s posts be visible by default? Personally, this wasn’t an easy decision. I knew that users would be less likely to see posts by others if they had to click the “Everyone” filter to see them. However, we needed to make sure that the university’s posts were immediately visible on our Page, and that the most recent information was visible first. We opted for the “University of Michigan-Flint” filter.

During Facebook Live’s session with with engineers behind the recent Page updates last week, the feedback on the new Wall filters was addressed. “As far as reacting to this feedback, we’ve definitely heard a lot, loud and clear on the product team and we’ve really been thinking about it. We’ve already made some changes since the initial launch to make the Everyone filter behave a little bit more like the Most Recent filter used to behave, and we’re definitely continuing to iterate. As of right now, the Everyone filter is the only one available, but we are iterating on it and definitely this is something we’re considering and thinking a lot about.”

At the time, I felt like Page admins we’re getting the don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you brush off. Apparently I was wrong. Thank you, Facebook, for listening and reacting to our feedback (and for reading my blog post, which you most certainly did). UM-Flint’s Facebook Page wall is set to show everyone’s posts, and users can choose to see what’s most recent. I am happy.