The internet age has come with many great things such as social media that many people cannot do without today. The various social media platforms available provide a way for people to share their lives through photos, videos and other types of content.
They can also share their opinions on various issues such as politics, television shows, and so much more. Businesses also get to market their products and services through them and interact with their customers on a more personal level. Evidently, the benefits of these platforms are innumerable.
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn are just some of the most popular social media platforms in use today, and the number keeps growing. As much as these platforms have several benefits, they also come with their fair share of problems.
1. Annoying posts on your newsfeed
One common problem among social media uses has to contend with annoying posts from friends, groups or pages that they follow. Some social media users post too much, and it can get irritating always to have their annoying posts on your newsfeed.
Whether it is a business running an ad campaign or a friend who won't stop posting vacation pictures and videos, or a group that is overenthusiastic about a planned meet-up and won't shut up about it, it can get on someone's nerves. If you have a friend who is always ranting about politics, or posting spoilers for a show you haven't watched yet, you probably know how annoying it can be.
Until recently, the only option that social media users had was to unfollow, block, or unfriend the particular user. But social media may be the only form of contact you have with your high school best mate or with that old colleague who you lost touch with. For most people, it is the only way to know what is going on with their old acquaintances and no one would want to miss out on this.
While you remain friends with someone after you unfollow them, you will not be able to see their posts on your newsfeed unless you follow them again. This is a good option but can be quite an inconvenience since you have to remember to follow them again.
If you are using social media to advertise or market your business, it is important to have a huge following, and unfriending users is therefore not a very good idea. Many users were left frustrated by this problem, not knowing what to do about it. But this no longer has to be so.
Facebook now has a snooze button that enables users to unfollow groups, pages or friends for anything from 1 day to 1 month. This gives users more control over they see on their newsfeeds, so they can only get content that they are interested in viewing. All a user has to do to use the snooze feature is click on the top right of a post and select snooze from the options given.
A Facebook spokesperson said that the snooze feature is still being tested, and is, therefore, not yet accessible by all users. The few users who have had a chance to try it out are excited about it and say that it was about time for the feature to be developed.
Advancements in technology have brought about immense benefits, but for people to be able to enjoy these benefits to the fullest, they should be able to have some level of control over what they consume in the form of online content.
Having things forced down users' throats detracts from the whole experience and may cause some of them to opt out of it as has been witnessed before entirely. Thanks to the new Facebook snooze feature, you no longer have to unfriend, unfollow, unlike or block pages, friends or groups because of their annoying posts; not unless you want to.
More improvements are expected from Facebook and other social media platforms to give people more control over their social media pages and what content appears on their newsfeeds. Facebook has made a great leap, and other social media platforms are expected to follow suit.
