WSB has been on Facebook and Twitter for nearly four years – long before most other news organizations (among others) hopped on. We’ve rolled through their changes, and hey, the services are free; they have the right to experiment. We made one big mistake ourselves, starting out on FB as “WS Blog” with a personal profile and maxing out on “friends” before realizing several months ago we really were supposed to be “West Seattle Blog” with a no-“fan”-limit page.
But Facebook’s latest change seems to be putting a roadblock in front of people who are just trying to find out “hey, what’s the latest?” …
… and sharing/finding out “the latest” is our mission in life, after all, but in a crazy sort of irony, FB seems to have created a structure in which new news can’t possibly be a “top story” (unless perhaps it immediately generates zillions of “likes,” which hard-news stories are unlikely to do).
In case you hadn’t quite noticed, this is what’s at the heart of the change: Their new inescapable “Top Stories” at the top of the “newsfeed” is something you have to scroll past to see the latest from us, and who knows who else – there’s no more option to just choose “Most Recent.”
We experimented with clicking the little blue triangle on each “top story” to try to tell FB we don’t want any top stories; not sure if that will work. But for now, if you are interested in finding your WSB links via FB, you may just have to bookmark our page and visit it periodically. We don’t link to all WSB stories there, but we do share a lot of other community links, and also short bursts of breaking news, among other content – plus WSB’ers post inquiries and sightings.
WSB on the Web, right here where you’re looking right now, is of course the “mothership” for everything we do (and our thousands of WSB Forums members) so you can always come here first. But we want to continue to serve those who prefer to “find out first” via FB/Twitter presence (and if you’re on Google Plus, since they haven’t created a “business page” option yet, your editor is there as herself – Tracy Record, westseattleblog@gmail.com, direct link here). So we thought we’d mention it here – in case the changes kept you from hearing it there.
–TR, WSB editor
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