It was only up for a few hours – a programmer stumbled upon a link to access the raw, unfiltered chronological newsfeed that so many users want. But as soon as the internet had discovered a glimpse of the pure stream of friend posts and status updates, it was gone.

You may have noticed that your news feed doesn’t give your all your friends’ posts. In fact, it seems to value sponsored posts and heavy users more – and certain people never seem to show up at all. And wasn’t there a way to see what everyone was doing? What happened to that?

Sorting: Top Stories vs Most Recent

Your Facebook News Feed automatically shows Top Stories, as determined by Facebook’s Edgerank Algorithm. These stories can be a combination of high-ranking friend posts, sponsored posts, and updates from pages you like. They aren’t chronological – they’re sorted by what’s considered best of the best, cream of the crop by Edgerank.

Most Recent shows the most recent posts made by your friends… but not all of them. It still filters your results based on who you comment on, who you like, and who you interact with. If there’s someone you ignore on Facebook, chances are they won’t feed to you, even on your Most Recent News Feed. In fact, it looks suspiciously like a chronological version of Top Stories….

Can I see an unfiltered news feed?

Nope, not anymore! The only way to see what certain people are up to is by visiting their profiles.

How can I make someone show up on my News Feed?

You can try interacting with them. By engaging with an individual, it changes their affinity to you and increases their likelihood of showing up on your News Feed. However, there is no way to fine-tune who shows up on your News Feed.

Can I make Most Recent default on my News Feed?

Not at the moment – even if you sort by Most Recent, once you navigate off Facebook it’ll revert your feed back to Top Stories.

However, there is a sneaky workaround…

Making Most Recent Posts Your Facebook News Feed Default (Shh… Don’t Tell Zuckerberg!)

If you keep yourself logged into Facebook, it’s possible for you to have the Most Recent stories on your homepage instead of the automatically generated Top Stories. Instead of typing Facebook’s address into your browser, create a bookmark that goes to the following link:

 http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

By using that bookmark to access Facebook, you’ll have your News Feed default to Most Recent posts!