New Facebook Status Bar Feature: Hide From Timeline Button

Logged onto Facebook today and noticed a new (snapchat-like) feature. In our status update section was a HIDE FROM TIMELINE BUTTON.

Facebook Hide From Timeline Button

Why would anyone want to hide a post from their timeline?

Well, in the ever-growing popularity of snapchat, social media gurus have noticed that not everyone wants every post showcased on their feed forever. Sometimes, in the moment posts and check-ins are meant to be just a glimpse, instead of a permanent memory. Or perhaps you were checked into an out of town location, but don’t want it to show to your friends (or even strangers) who may be snooping around your Facebook page. The ‘Hide From Timeline’ feature helps with that. And now that you can control it from your status update section, you save time and multiple clicks to make it happen. Without this button, you would have to go to your timeline. From there you would need to select the dropdown arrow on a specific post and hide the post from your timeline…… 5 extra clicks and :60 extra seconds wasted.

Now, this new Hide from Timeline button doesn’t help when you have been tagged in a post. However, if you have your security settings set to where you have to approve posts to your timeline, then you are already protected. If you are unsure of how to set that up, click this link to learn how.

Before today, there were limited alternatives to hiding a status or check-in boasting to everyone (even thieves) that you are out of town. Your choices were to either delete it entirely, show it to a specific smart list, or go through the extra steps to hide it from your timeline.

So what’s the difference between deleting and hiding a story from my Timeline?

Deleting stories: Deleting a story will remove it from your Timeline and from Facebook entirely. You always have the option to delete the things you post on Facebook.

Hiding stories: Hiding a story will remove it from your Timeline, but it will still show in the News Feed and possibly the Ticker. This means stories you hide are still visible to the audience they were shared with.

If someone else tagged you in a post that you’re unhappy with, you can remove the tag or ask the person who tagged you to take the photo or post down.

Now you have even more control of what people see! Not only can you can select the list of people you want to show your post to. You can select whether or not you want to post it to your timeline or just the facebook feed.

Facebook has not rolled this feature out to everyone just yet, it is actually in developer testing, but so far it looks like it might be a keeper. 

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