How About We Don't Delete Newsfeeds

1ns1d3_0u7

I don't fully get why it needs to be shifted to the communities tab where you need to re-add people on your friends list to continue getting the same content that's already readily available?

sclady21

Doesn't make sense to me either.

Betty

Hi y’all, 

Wanted to first acknowledge that saying good bye to any feature is hard, and I too am sad to see the Newsfeed ride off into the sunset. I do feel strongly that social interaction is important for a lot of folks on what can often be a lonely and difficult journey and having friends cheering you on can make a difference. 

I’ll be transparent that the Newsfeed was one of our oldest features that had many flaws and was no longer sustainable to support. While it was not used by many we understand that it’s a real loss for those who used it.
While it is not perfect, due to some limitations like no friend or follow features in the Community, our team enabled the Community Activity Feed on profiles within the community as it was an existing feature available from our forum providers. Some of you may even remember seeing it briefly back in 2021 when we updated the Community.
The community profiles only have two options Public or Private, and the Private option makes the Activity Feed unviewable by others. The next best alternative to utilizing the Activity Feed would be to create a Private Group to invite your friends to and interact with them there.
I know these options don’t “replace” the Newsfeed by any means, but we hope they help give some members some options to interact with others outside of topic driven discussions.

springlering62

@betty

My “little used” newsfeed - the one I check every few hours for support and inspiration- has blown up with friends angry over the discontinuation.

I see @Nova posted something about an activity feed a couple weeks ago.

Could you all please do a headline post clarifying what’s being removed, what stays, what’s new, how this affects our communication with friends?

Even I’m utterly confused and I thought I had a pretty decent handle on what’s going on around here.

I clean my friends list out of inactive users regularly and still have well over 200 treasured friends, many here with me since the get-go.

What happens to my friends? Do we have to form some kind of private group? What if person A is a friend but doesn’t care to share a group with Person C? Am I going to lose one or the other?

Do I have to sit down and write down all 221 user IDS and hand enter them in to some kind of group?

springlering62

And, as my husband just asked, if the newsfeed disappears, and presumably the friends list with it, how will he be able to access my diary to copy his meals over?

That is critical to us.

JustJ2014

I do believe all former spark people have constantly felt like MFP is becoming less and less user-friendly. No more Blogs. They made it very hard to post a pic on the newsfeed. Now we lose the newsfeed altogether. Another sad sad day.

jimdyoga

This is not good. The friends and newsfeed aspect of MFP is what brings me here. If it goes away, I don't know why I would remain active on this site. I like being only able to see the activity of people that I want to interact with. I don't want my posts to be public for all to see. This is a very sad development. I don't understand why newsfeed or something similar cannot be supported. It works for other social media (FB, IG, etc.).

myndieet

@Betty I'm kind of to emotional to get the proper words out about how this change is effecting me. I Don't understand what all this means as English is not my native language. But I do no finding anything in 'the community' is not a simple thing and to form 'private groups' with my friends list, come on.. After logging on to mfp almost 2700 times, often staying patient as things where slow or not working at all, my friends posts in the newsfeed kept me going.. I'm Very disappointed 😭

JustJ2014

We do NOT want to see their BLOG more with all the ads! You will now have to join the same group with your friends to communicate with anyone. I have a group with 336 members but not all of them visit every day. We will have to create one group just for our own Newsfeed?? When many of us are already in numerous little groups and we can see anyone we are friends with, without being in the same group.

CaffeinatedConfectionist

What value does MFP offer over countless other calorie and tracking sites and apps once this feature has been removed? The social aspect was a key driver for many, and while the news feed may "not have been used by many," what proportion of actually active users utilize it? There must be thousands of defunct accounts on this site and app that are being counted among those who are not using these features, and I'd anticipate that many of those that remain active - and, importantly, serve as promoters for the site and app - are those that use these features. I will no longer recommend MFP to others, as there are other apps with more robust and accurate calorie and activity databases and sites with more active forums and community boards. The only thing that made it stand out from a crowd of similar apps was the ability to create a robust and supportive community of friends.

JamieS74

Absolutely disappointed! Years of friendships made that now we will have to search for them in the activity section? This makes no sense how they can do away with something that works so well for many!

Betty

Hi @springlering62 Thanks for the tag and questions. We'll work on getting an informational post up. I'll do my best to answer some of your questions here.

First off the Friend's List is not impacted by Newsfeed going away. You can still add friends, as you do need to friend someone to send them a Private Message. From the Friends List you can still click on your friend's profile and find the Diary icon to access their Diary if diary sharing is enabled.

As I mentioned, I know some of the community options aren't super ideal as a Newsfeed stand in and I think there will be growing pains and learnings as y'all find what works best for you and your friend groups.

Private Messages are still very much an option for one on one communication, and Private groups are a way to communicate with a curated group of people. But yes, not everyone may want to join a group.

I'm reading all of your feedback and passing it along to the team. We'll continue to research and explore other options for the future that better support different social interaction needs.

LadyInTheArena

I will be completely frank- my fitfam here is the entire reason I use this app. There are many trackers out there now, most of which have better functionality, but my social support system is not there, it’s here. It is the one thing that sets MFP apart from others, without them, it is functionally much more like my smart scale app, which I use 1x per day to record my weight. Essentially making something that is priceless…into something that has little value at all.

JamieS74

Betty wrote: »

Hi @springlering62 Thanks for the tag and questions. We'll work on getting an informational post up. I'll do my best to answer some of your questions here.

First off the Friend's List is not impacted by Newsfeed going away. You can still add friends, as you do need to friend someone to send them a Private Message. From the Friends List you can still click on your friend's profile and find the Diary icon to access their Diary if diary sharing is enabled.

As I mentioned, I know some of the community options aren't super ideal as a Newsfeed stand in and I think there will be growing pains and learnings as y'all find what works best for you and your friend groups.

Private Messages are still very much an option for one on one communication, and Private groups are a way to communicate with a curated group of people. But yes, not everyone may want to join a group.

I'm reading all of your feedback and passing it along to the team. We'll continue to research and explore other options for the future that better support different social interaction needs.

The social newsfeed aspect of the app was what made MFP. I liked being able to easily scroll and see what friends had posted and shared what. Going to somebody's activity feed just to see what they are up to seems more time consuming. Don't try and fix what isn't broken! I have a feeling this is a bad move and many will be leaving the site

JamieS74

Betty wrote: »

Hi @springlering62 Thanks for the tag and questions. We'll work on getting an informational post up. I'll do my best to answer some of your questions here.

First off the Friend's List is not impacted by Newsfeed going away. You can still add friends, as you do need to friend someone to send them a Private Message. From the Friends List you can still click on your friend's profile and find the Diary icon to access their Diary if diary sharing is enabled.

As I mentioned, I know some of the community options aren't super ideal as a Newsfeed stand in and I think there will be growing pains and learnings as y'all find what works best for you and your friend groups.

Private Messages are still very much an option for one on one communication, and Private groups are a way to communicate with a curated group of people. But yes, not everyone may want to join a group.

I'm reading all of your feedback and passing it along to the team. We'll continue to research and explore other options for the future that better support different social interaction needs.

Will the friends we already have stay or do we have to befriend people?

COGypsy

It would be interesting to know how many of the "not many" users of Newsfeed were free vs. premium users. Are there plans for it to come back as a "premium" feature?

Lietchi

This change is a HUGE step backwards.
No single space to follow updates from all of my connections/friends, really?

No one here has one homogenous group of friends that can be lumped together in one group. And I'm certainly not going to visit each friend's individual page each day to see if they have updates.

The newsfeed, a little used feature, really? More used than the boards, I'm sure!
The boards are nearly dead as it is, removing the newsfeed is pretty much killing the remaining community part of MFP, IMHO.

AmyDahlTorres

It's funny to me that many of my MFP friends/family are chiming in. Are we the only people using it?? The social aspect and support is critical for me staying on MFP. I'm a premium user but see no point in renewing if MFP loses the social aspect. Very sad day.

BarbMessimer

I'm very upset about this. My friends on the newsfeed have been one of the "secrets" to my weight loss due to their suggestions and constant support. They can track the foods I eat and my weight loss and their comments have been extremely helpful. The community boards have left me cold. People don't use them very often and the format isn't conducive to good communication. I'm not sure if I'll continue using MFP if the newsfeeds are discontinued.

parys1

This is very upsetting. I've been here 13 years and have met some of the best people in my life. You keep chipping away at the soul of this site: the people and their connections.

thrillcox55

Long time premium user, the reason I’m on MFP is the newsfeed. I’ve sampled other apps over the years, and while most are actually better from a calorie/macro logging perspective, zero of them had the community and connectivity of MFP which is why I’ve remained here for so many years. Without the newsfeed, I’ll be moving on.

I can certainly understand the unsustainable nature of supporting legacy features, but I suspect ripping without replacing the newsfeed will kill this app.