How to customize exactly what appears in your Facebook News Feed

By default, Facebook uses a magical algorithm called EdgeRank to decide what makes it to your News Feed, and what falls by the wayside. Lots of factors affect what ultimately appears in your News Feed, but mostly it's determined by a) things you've explicitly signed up for ('liking' pages), and b) updates from friends that you regularly interact with.

But what if you're bored of reading dull updates from distant cousins, or emotastic posts from eyelinered types that seem to spend 90% of their time whining on Facebook? Or maybe you're friends with someone on Facebook and a follower on Twitter and you don't want to see every status update in double.

Fortunately, it's as simple as hovering over an item in your News Feed, clicking the X that appears in the top right corner, and then clicking Hide all by X. Updates from that person or page will no longer appear in your News Feed.

But what if you want to disable the EdgeRank entirely, and simply show all activity by friends and pages in your News Feed?
Click Most Recent in the top right corner of your News Feed and then Edit options. A box will pop up with all of your blocked friends and pages (and you can remove them, too, if you've had a change of heart). From the Show friends from dropdown at the top, select All of your friends and pages.

Be warned, though: if you have more than a couple of hundred friends and 'liked' pages, keeping up with an unfiltered News Feed is a mammoth undertaking.

For more Facebook and tech tips, check our tips index.

Tags: friends, news feed, NewsFeed, social networking, social-networking, SocialNetworking, status update, StatusUpdate, tips, wall