Anticipating a reaction

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The News Feed is what Facebook calls each person's homepage. It is a selection of recent posts that your Facebook Friends have made. It doesn't show every post that every Friend has made. To get that, you have to look up the Friend and click on their page. Instead, it selects from amongst recent posts. As far as I can tell, the program decides which posts to select based on how often the two Friends comment on each other's posts or send things to each other combined with whoever has been Friended most recently. Newest Friends get the most posts shown to you. Older Friends have to maintain their position on your home page by frequently responding to things you write or posting on your wall. Otherwise, the program sinks that Friend into obscurity and doesn't put their posts on many homepages.

So the way it works is, the more Friends somebody else has, the less likely they are to see your posts unless you deliberatley make yourself visible to the software by writing on their Homepage Wall (rather than just on your own) or frequently commenting on their posts.

Thus the OP may literally be invisible. If she doesn't frequently write on other peoples' walls or make frequent comments on their posts, the software won't put her posts on their NewsFeed and these posts won't be seen unless somebody specifically looks her up. I maintain my position on other people's pages by frequently commenting on the posts of others and frequently writing on their walls so that the software keeps me on their Homepage.

Thank you very much, friends!

So in order to see everyone's posts I have to click on each of them? I thought I was getting all the comments that all my contacts made on their walls...

One more thing: what's the difference betwsen the "live feed" and the "news feed"? Is the first all activity by friends and the latter only their wall posts?

And what's the difference between writing on your wall or writing a status update?

That confuses the heck out of me too - they usually both look identical. And ditto for the writing on your own wall/status update thingee.....

That could explain a lot of the non responses.Thanks for clearing that up. I feel a little better now.The two responses I got were positive and supportive.

I hope I did not leave the impression I thought *you* were looking for a thrill. I was suggesting *other* people might not be thinking very far beyond looking for one ... and I can definitely relate to your feeling of disappointment or frustration when something actually worthy of notice seems to be ignored.

Aimless, CONGRATULATIONS on your 10 years of sobriety. I think that's awesome!

I'm going to have to read this whole thread (haven't yet). You would not believe how overwhelming I find Facebook. I only joined to see someone's photos from a tarot convention a while back, and only afterward learned that you cannot delete a Facebook account. Since my dad's death a couple weeks ago, all these relatives I haven't heard from in years are sending me friend requests and so forth, and I am so LOST on Facebook it isn't funny -- and overwhelmed by the requests from relatives I don't know very well. I have trouble just keeping up with my sister and brother.

How do you deal with Facebook?

The strange thing is I have two blogs, and I never feel that way about them, I feel that I'm in control of them. But Facebook is a little too much like high school where popularity was such a big deal -- and I ran away from there, grasping my diploma, as soon as I possibly could.

No, I wouldn't think that of you. I don't think any of my Facebook friends are that shallow either which is why I was confused. I interpreted it as I had broken some rule by being too personal and that they were embarrassed for me but I think Janissy's reasoning makes the most sense.

Cool ... and now that I have both feet in my mouth ...!

Thanks for the congratulations. Since that time there have been 3 people (2 my own age) I knew that have died from liver failure due to drinking. It could have been me. But I'm not a drinking is evil kind of person. I just can't drink.

I don't really deal with Facebook. I blunder through it. Until Janissy posted I had no idea of the difference between live feed and news feed. I still don't understand what "tag" means (in actual application) even though I looked it up on internet lingo.