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Facebook's new 'star friends' doesn't quite shine

Facebook on Thursday morning greeted users with yet another new way to bring real friends to the top of newsfeeds. Now you can assign a star to friends, adding them to a "close friends" group, which means more of their posts will appear in your feed compared with those of friends you haven't starred.
Facebook's new tool to "star" friends to bring them to the top of newsfeeds needs a little work.
Facebook's new tool to "star" friends to bring them to the top of newsfeeds needs a little work.Facebook
/ Source: TechNewsDaily

Facebook on Thursday morning greeted users with yet another new way to bring real friends to the top of newsfeeds.

Now you can assign a star to friends, adding them to a "close friends" group, which means more of their posts will appear in your feed compared with those of friends you haven't starred.

Sound familiar? Starring friends is the reverse of Facebook's Acquaintance tool that launched in March. It let users shunt people to a list so fewer of their posts would be seen. But it's hard to find. [ How to Create an Acquaintance List on Facebook ]

While the star friends tool is much easier to use, Facebook still has some kinks to work out.

If you try the tool, 16 of your friends appear whom you can click to star. Each starred friend drops off to make room for more friends. Unfortunately, you can't expand the display, so once you've reached 16 friends who don't qualify for a star, you're out of luck. You can type the names of additional friends into a box, but that assumes that you know, off the top of your head, everyone you want to be in the starred group.

And it makes it easy to forget someone. You can't simply scroll through all your friends to decide who gets a star. [ 3 Ways to Turn Your Facebook Friends into Enemies ]

Acquaintance lists were way too cumbersome and starring friends isn't quite as easy as it should be. Third time's a charm?