Facebook -- you love it, you hate it, right? But you can't stop looking at it, scrolling, liking, and commenting. Mark Zuckerberg wants to change that.
Zuckerberg, the founder, Chairman and CEO of Facebook, posted on January 11 that the current version of the Facebook News Feed is not beneficial for our well-being. He described significant changes that Facebook will be making to our personal News Feeds (all the posts you see when you open Facebook). His goal is to have Facebook users spend LESS time on Facebook, less time sitting, and less time compulsively scrolling. During the time that we are on Facebook, he wants our News Feed to be more personal, showing more posts from family and friends and groups that we're interested in, and more engaging videos and content.
Take a moment to think about what you see on your News Feed when you take a quick peek in the morning. Maybe a couple of posts from your local town group asking for a plumber recommendation and about a special meeting at the high school, a few posts from the self-improvement groups that you follow, quite a few sponsored posts from national and local companies, and some videos from Tasty showing how to make some decadent dishes (those get me every time). There will be some posts from friends and from personal groups that you're really active in. These posts are all selected for you based on the current algorithms that Facebook uses. You may be a fan of hundreds of local business pages, but you actually only see about 5% of their posts. You'll see a lot of posts from groups you follow, but not all.
Your News Feed will change a lot -- you may already have noticed the changes. Why is this important for the everyday Facebook user? Facebook's new approach will rebalance your News Feed. Posts from business pages will be greatly suppressed, and posts from your friends and family members will appear more often. Group posts will also appear frequently. You may see more Facebook Live videos. Posts that get lots of discussion will be shared more.
It's important to be aware that these changes are happening behind the scenes, since posts from businesses that you follow may disappear. For instance, if you rely on posts from your local craft studio or sports center about their upcoming classes, it is likely that you will no longer see them. Our page, Macaroni Kid Acton Concord Bedford Lexington, is a business page, and therefore our posts will appear less often in your news feed, even our posts about fun local events, great deals, and local resources.
So, what can you do?
- We are always here for you, at http://Lexington.MacaroniKid.com. Our daily event calendar is right on our homepage and can be checked at any time to see what's happening on any day; scroll to the bottom of the homepage to see all the events for today and the following few days. We work hard to keep the event calendar updated at least three weeks out, and big events are loaded even further in advance. Our Guides have lots of ideas for things to do and local resources -- day trips, indoor pools, birthday party location, kids classes, etc. If you often check the calendar, add our page to your Bookmark bar.
- Make it easy to check our calendar by creating a shortcut icon and adding it to your phone homescreen. Use your phone's browser to pull up our website then click the Settings or ... menu, and choose "Add to homescreen". This example below is using Chrome on an Android phone.
- Read our weekly newsletter, delivered in your email on Thursdays, for the top pick events of the week, updates, and articles about local events and resources. The newsletter lists 10-20 top events for the week, while the daily event calendar on our website has a complete listing of approximately 100-125 local events weekly (depending on the season).
- If there's a business page that you really rely on (we hope ours is one of them!), you can set it so that you see every one of their Facebook posts or be notified when a Page posts new content. Go to the business page, click the "Follow" button (next to Like), and select the "See First" notification setting under "In Your News Feed" (note that you can select "See First" for only five business pages, total). You can also click "Edit Notifications Settings" and click the Posts checkbox so that you're notified when your favorite business pages posts new content. Not sure how to check Notifications? Look for the little alarm bell on the bottom of your Facebook phone app. Click it to see all your Notifications.
Macaroni Kid Acton-Concord-Bedford-Lexington is a free weekly newsletter and website focused on fun events and information for local families.
We gather together all kinds of local family events and activities each week, and add useful information about classes, family-focused businesses, book and product reviews, recipes, crafts, school and camp guides and more.
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