Voting on Facebook News Feed stories

If this rumor is true, Facebook users may soon have more control over their News Feed, Digg-style. Currently, Facebook’s algorithm is the primary determinant over which of the 0.2% of its News Feed story candidates goes on your Feed. Yes, there are controls letting users tweak their Feed by story type, but not at such a granular level as this.

(note: “Vote Now” added later by ValleyWag for effect). What would be innovative is if Facebook allowed this information to increase the relevance of its ads. Seth Godin points out that Facebook potentially faces the the Hotmail problem, where users have no say in the ads they see. Google doesn’t face the same issue, because their entire model revolves around delivering relevant ads based on user intent. The better Facebook understands the intent of its users, the more effectively it can deliver advertising that is relevant to its users.

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