Facebook's News Feed is probably the place where users are spending most of their time. As one of the social giant's main feature, Facebook wants to keep it functioning at its best, and make it even better at the very least.
The company wants to build a new type of News Feed that is full of stories you actually want to read. While this isn't the first or second time Facebook changes its News Feed algorithm, Facebook is adding some more criteria to determine which post should be shown
This way, the company tries to see which posts you do like, and which you don't, to then show you the stories you actually want to read.
On February 1st, 2016, the company in its blog post, said that it's putting a greater emphasis on "human assessments of what constitutes a 'good' Facebook post, rather than just relying on straightforward engagement metrics such as Likes and clicks."
What Facebook means is to show posts without prioritizing the number of comments and likes. Your top items in your News Feed will no longer showing those posts that have tons of comments and likes Facebook thought you would like. Instead, News Feed will rely on your feedback to help it deliver a more meaningful feed.
"The actions people take on Facebook - liking, clicking, commenting or sharing a post - are historically some of the main factors considered to determine what to show at the top of your News Feed. But these factors don't always tell us the whole story of what is most meaningful to you," they wrote.
Facebook understands that each person's preferences differ from others. Your friend's posts that has many likes and comments may not appeal you, and Facebook is putting those posts a bit lower on the feed.
Changing The Factors To Determine Which Posts To Show
Facebook's decision to change its News Feed algorithm came from a survey feedback the company received from a group of more than 1,000 people. They were asked to rate their experience on the site, and suggest how they would like Facebook to improve the News Feed. The company also surveyed tens of thousands of users around the world each day, asking them to rate stories they see.
By analyzing the way these users rate posts on a one-to-five scale, Facebook found out that there were some posts that users wanted to see at the top of their feeds but didn’t necessarily want to Like, and there are also posts that attract a lot of engagement but actually frustrate users.
"We ask over a thousand people to rate their experience every day and tell us how we can improve the content they see when they check Facebook - we call this our Feed Quality Panel. We also survey tens of thousands of people around the world each day to learn more about how well we're ranking each person's feed," the blog post said.
With the information Facebook gathered, the company changes the News Feed algorithm to weigh the level of engagement of a post as well as the likelihood a user may want to see it at the top of their feed.
"News Feed will begin to look at both the probability that you would want to see the story at the top of your feed and the probability that you will like, comment on, click or share a story," explained Facebook. "We will rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see near the top of their News Feed."
The update for the News Feed is alongside Facebook's ongoing attempt to make News Feed more "fundamentally human," like what Chief Product Officer Chris Cox once said. Incorporating the sentiments of actual people into rankings, not just pure algorithm, to augment the cold brain of sophisticated computation should help Facebook in achieving that goal.
Previously, Facebook also made some key changes to the News Feed in 2015 when it allows users to take control of their News Feed preferences by giving the option to select group of pages/friends whose posts will appear more frequent.
The Changes To Be Seen
To some people, Facebook's News Feed is just a list of feed. To some other, it's something curated unique to them. Creating something unique to each individual is not an easy task, especially when you have more than 1.5 billion active users that are actively sharing.
The change will definitely impact on how the News Feed will show its variety of posts. And because it's curated, the changes will also vary from one person to the next.
In general, as Facebook explained, the update should not impact the reach of posts. However, some will see an increase while some will see a decrease. The update should balance the two according to how users engagement with that post.
As for Pages, they should avoid encouraging people to take action (encouraging clicks) because this will only cause a temporary spike in metrics before the algorithm kicks in to rebalance it.
"The impact of these changes on a story's distribution will vary depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity," Facebook said. "Pages might see some declines in referral traffic if the rate at which their stories are clicked on does not match how much people report wanting to see those stories near the top of their News Feed. This update helps re-balance those two factors, so people are seeing relevant stories to them."
Facebook said that it's committing itself to communicate with partners about the changes.
