The Romans would be proud

Despite growing user concerns about Facebook's ever-more-intrusive burrowing into private activities, the social network has unveiled yet another delectable feature to help segment personal preferences.

Wednesday saw the launch of "feedback controls," which enable users to rate the usefulness of their News Feed messages.

"Did a particular story make you smile? Give it a thumbs up," the Facebook blog coaxes. "Did a story annoy you? Click on the x icon and the story will be collapsed and your opinion will be used to make similar stories less common."

Sponsored messages, which also appear in feeds, cannot be voted upon or discarded by Facebook members.

It goes on to add, "News Feed will use this feedback to further tailor stories for you and to identify the types of stories and applications you might like to see in the future."

Allowing people to tailor their news preferences mimics the Digg model, where users post news stories and can either bury a story or bring it higher, based on its denoted usefulness.