Facebook filters the news feed so you only see the 15% or so of stories it thinks you’ll find most interesting. But a newly discovered “All” link shows you almost everything posted by your friends and Pages you Like. Facebook confirmed to me that http://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf_all ”is an old link that allows you to access your news feed operating on an earlier version of our ranking algorithm.”
First spotted by Tom Waddington, the All feed could make sure Facebook addicts never miss a photo or funny status update, and get marketers more eye balls. However, Facebook stresses that “This feed does not show all posts”, and since it’s an “old link”, there’s a good chance it could get shut down soon.
Years ago, Facebook offered a near-firehose real-time stream you could toggle to from the home page called “Most Recent”. Based on Facebook’s statement, that might be what this link brings up. But since it didn’t deliver as compelling stories to the average user, Facebook ditched it in favor of a heavily filtered feed. That’s great for making sure you see the most Liked updates by friends since you last logged on. However, it can show the same updates over and over again to people who visit Facebook all the time.
Facebook tried to appease power users by returning the “Most Recent” toggle switch, but it actually still filters out a lot. So if you can’t get enough of what your friends and favorite brands are doing, check out ” https://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf_all “. You better do it quick, though. Since this just seems to be something Facebook uses internally and that wasn’t meant for public consumption, it might not be around long.
Though it doesn’t automatically refresh with updates, it will show you a reverse chronological stream of almost every news feed post by friends and Pages starting with a few seconds ago. Judging by my initial scans of the All feed, you’ll also see plenty of wall posts, new friendships, Page Likes by friends, Event RSVPs, “Trending Articles” boxes, and more.
You’ll see some stories from apps, like a friend Liking photos on Instagram, or two friends listening to the same artist on Spotify. However, the All feed won’t show you every song every friend listens to, and you won’t see every time a friend Likes or comments on someone’s status. Otherwise it’d be so cluttered that real posts to the feed would get drowned out.
There’s been a ton of controversy about Facebook Pages not being able to reach their fans with every update they post. Brands might not dig it, but that filtering makes the feed better. If people want to see more of the posts by Pages they Like, they can try the separate Pages feed which shows the best ones but not every single update, or the new All feed. Both those options could excite marketers who get big traffic and awareness boosts when people see their news feed posts.
Most important, though, is the potential for the All feed to draw even more time-on-site/app from hardcore Facebook users. It means you don’t have to worry about browsing a feed of reruns. Some people might use it as a dashboard to keep up with everything going on in the lives of friends, while others could use it as a real-time news source that could even compete with Twitter.
Why wouldn’t Facebook just make this easily accessible? Because each story in the unfiltered feed is less likely to seem interesting to the average person. It could also confuse Facebook novices. I think hiding it in the drop-down news feed sorting button on the web and the gear icon on mobile would be a nice hat tip to Facebook’s hungriest users.
For now, the social network might be content letting those people discover and bookmark it themselves. However, it could be quite taxing on Facebook’s servers, and not what Facebook wants people to see, so like a broken fire hydrant sprinkling water in the street, play with it now because it might get shut off.