Facebook Now Lets You Post Straight to the Newsfeed

Tired of having your Facebook posts tattooed on your timeline? Facebook’s new update will enable you to post only to your newsfeed! While users have already been able to retroactively hide their posts from their timeline, this feature will allow posts to never be posted on the timeline at all (meaning you won’t have to remember to delete it retroactively once it shows up on your memories years later). The update is currently being tested and has begun rolling out to a small segment of Facebook profiles.

This new feature works through an added box to be checked where users post, which states, “Hide from Your Timeline.” An addition to this change is the option to alert specific users to what you post. This will work by having the users you want to see your post receiving a notification to visit your upload.

“Facebook states that this change reflects the manner in which the platform is being used; users spend more time on the newsfeed than on visiting specific people’s personal profiles.”

This Snapchat esque update has come about in response to users requesting an option to share information without it being simultaneously reflected on their own timeline. It is to be noted, however, that unlike Snapchat, these posts are still searchable within the timeline and do not automatically delete after a certain amount of time. Another caveat is that this option is not available when sharing someone else’s post; these will be visible on your own timeline until you choose to hide them from your timeline.

Facebook states that this change reflects the manner in which the social platform is being used; users spend more time on the newsfeed than on visiting specific people’s personal profiles. The platform may want to appease the more immediate, compulsive nature of newer, younger Facebook users who may not have considered the more long-term impact or presentation of their personal profiles previously.

Would you feel more comfortable posting more often with this feature, where every post will not be automatically stamped onto your timeline? Some users have already reviewed this new feature and are excited by its addition. Users believe that the update will make timelines cleaner for professional purposes and will more easily hide impulsive, Twitter-like activity on Facebook from people who specifically visit your page to learn more about you.

I wonder whether cleaner is necessarily better. Businesses may merely find ways to search for these posts that you purposefully “hid” from your profile, knowing that you don’t want these to represent you. However, isn’t everything we say and do on social media ultimately a reflection of who we are? So why do we feel the need to act in ways that we do not want to depict us?

Another implication could be whether this change will make the information on user profiles so limited that there will be little point to personal profiles at all. This update could unfold to a point where users post irrelevant content so frequently that their friends may no longer want to sift through their own newsfeeds at all.

In effect, users may then hide their friends’ posts more if they become excessive, thereby limiting the interaction between them. This may be why the added notification feature is included in the update, to call attention to posts with more merit rather than spontaneous chatter. I also wonder whether this update may make users feel more secure to post things that will not be tied to their profile as strongly and may therefore express more impulsive or negative opinions.

This update may spark a change for future marketing strategies. Since most brands have an active Facebook presence, this update may provide marketers with an extra avenue to speak to its target audience directly without filling their own page with unnecessary, direct conversations.

Only time will tell what effects this seemingly small change will bring about in the Facebook community.