Facebook Expands Experimental Alerts Feature for New Posts by Friends

Facebook is expanding the testing of its new experimental feature for its Web interface that shows users alerts if their friends have posted something new. The social giant was first reported to be testing the feature with limited users back in December.

While the rollout of the feature is still limited, several users as well as Gadgets 360 staff are reporting seeing the feature - marking an expansion from the start of Facebook's testing back in December. Facebook had confirmed the test back in December, saying, "We want to make it easier to see when your friends have new posts on Facebook. This is a test of a new feature that will allow you to browse the latest updates from your friends."

The biggest highlight of the new alerts feature is that users sitting on their Facebook Profile will now see notifications about new, unseen posts in their Friends widget, and are not required to go through their entire Facebook News Feed to find or browse these posts.

The alerts about unseen posts are only visible in the Friends widget on the user's Profile page, and do not extend to the Friends page that lists all friends on Facebook. New posts are notified with blue dots that show under the names of the friends who just posted something on Facebook and have not yet seen by the user. The blue dot is also accompanied by the counts for the number of posts. Previously, it was speculated that the alerts only show on the thumbnail of friends with verified profiles, however as we can see, that's not the case with the wider rollout of the feature in testing.

Clicking on the thumbnail with a notification will only open the friend's regular Profile page, and as you'd expect, the new 'unseen' posts are seen as new posts on the wall. The only visible difference is in the URL, which now contains the attribute "pnref=lhc.unseen". The feature will also allow users to skip through most of the ads that appear on our News Feed. As of now, details about how the feature works are still limited. There is also no word as to how Facebook chooses the friends visible in the user's Friends widget.

Recent reports also claimed that Facebook was testing a feature that allowed users knowing when a friend was typing a comment. The feature despite being small could come handy in how users interacted with Facebook posts. The social networking company had revealed that it was testing the feature with a limited number of users on iOS.