Facebook now lets you mute annoying friends or groups for 30 days

(Image credit: Facebook)

We all know those friends who post a little too much on Facebook: the friends who, well, treat it more like Twitter. Today, Facebook announced that it's giving users the option of temporarily "muting" those folks when they get a little too giddy about a topic, and it's calling the feature "Snooze."

If you're tired of putting up with a particular person, group or page for a while, just click the menu in the upper right-hand corner of their latest post and click "Snooze" and you won't see anything from them for 30 days. The offending parties won't be notified.

In many ways it's a friendlier option than Facebook's "Unfollow" feature, which keeps the person hidden permanently, or at least until you undo it.

Maybe that type of permanent ignorance is what you crave for your bliss, but it's often easy to forget you've muted a person for months when you only meant to mute them while they're releasing status updates for every single play of the World Series.

See you in a month

It also helps fix those situations in which you don't really want to unfollow a group, but you don't care for getting bombarded with its commentary on whatever trendy topic is commanding its members' attention at the moment.

Viewed from the other side of the table, the groups will likely appreciate it as Snooze could mean more people will stick around in controversial times rather than outright leaving.

In case you change your mind about seeing their posts again, Facebook will notify you when the Snooze period is coming to an end. And, just as with the Unfollow option, you can turn it off at any time.