Facebook profiles may soon no longer be a long list of everything you’ve ever shared. Facebook appears to be testing a tool that would allow users to share posts without including them in their profile, sending them to the news feed only.
Facebook hasn’t yet confirmed the test of the feature, but The Next Web’s Matt Navarra recently spotted the option. The option shows up at the top of a new post next to the privacy options as well as the option to add to an album. By selecting “show on profile,” users can choose whether to, like the current option, post to both the news feed and the profile, or to just send the post to the news feed only.
NEW: Facebook now let’s you select whether to show your post on your profile or just in News Feed pic.twitter.com/LxxYfjygV8
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 15, 2017
Another variation of the feature uses a pop-up window allowing users to choose to where to share, including the news feed and Stories.
Facebook is also testing a new option to share a new post ONLY to News Feed and/or Stories (not your profile)
h/t @AlHasanps pic.twitter.com/hcIruuvwsF
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 15, 2017
If the tool makes it past testing, the option could give users more control over the look and content of their profile. Friends frequent the news feed to read updates, but visitors on the profile tend to be looking for something more specific, like something that user shared in the past, checking up on an old friend or checking out a potential new hire.
Users could, for example, want to share news stories they are interested in publicly, but may not want a potential new boss or friend to guess their political affiliation from the list of posts they’ve shared. Another option is to put the more important events in the profile, but leave off that photo of what was for lunch.
The test was spotted on Friday, December 15, the same day that Facebook brought the “snooze” tool out of testing. The option allows users to temporarily remove a friend, Page or group from their news feed for 30 days. A number of new tests and features appear to be cleaning up the social network while offering users more options to control what they see — Facebook also recently eliminated that real-time ticker and also adjusted algorithms to make video series that users visit more than once appear higher in the news feed.
