You reach people that are close to you, and prioritize them much more often that those that you know less. Facebook understands this and for that it's changing its News Feed to actually show you more posts from your friends.
In a blog post on April 21, 2015, Facebook said that it's trying to "get this balance right", and it announced that its reconfiguring the News Feed's algorithm to show contents from friends you know better higher up.
Facebook's News Feed is one of the core service it has. Its goal is to show contents that matters to people. But when it gets overpopulated with things you don't like, would you be happy?
The reason for the update is to give the right mix between updates from friends, public figures, publishers, businesses and community organizations you're connected to. Since what Facebook's News Feed algorithm shows differ from one person to another, Facebook is keeping its progress in improving it.
From feedbacks the company gathered, Facebook is on an ongoing understanding of how people use News Feed. The social network announced three updates:
- Improving the experience for people who don't have a lot of content available to see.
- Ensuring that contents posted directly by friends you care about (photos, videos, status updates or links), will be higher up in News Feed.
- Lowering stories that appear to be from friends liking or commenting on a post.
Good for Users, Bad for Advertisers
The algorithm update for Facebook's News Feed may come useful to the social network's users. But by putting more posts from those they care and love higher, this in turn can put brands' advertisements way down. For advertisers and business Pages that depend on Facebook for influence and engagement, they may have their referral traffic decreases.
For Facebook, the company has plenty of ways to get supports from people advertising on its platform. With over 2 million advertisers, Facebook is closing in to Google. But by giving a healthier experience in a long-run campaign for its users, Facebook is trying to give a unique value to keep people stick to the social network.
As the competition for the limited attention grows, brands and businesses have to either work harder to be resourceful to users if they want people to see them in their News Feed, or buy more ads to boost their reach.
When the social network was still young, it still rely on people to post as much as possible in order to get as much contents it can to build the platform. It didn't take long until Facebook succeeded in doing so, and became one of the most interesting place on the web with brands from numerous industries, sports teams, news websites, blogs and many others, populating its feed.
As Facebook is holding too much contents, and all struggling to show in every single moment, the company is stumbling into a huge problem: it has too choose which should come first, and which should come later, and which to not come at all.
According to Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, people share more things online every year. Both people and Pages are posting more status updates, photos, videos, and links. As users are adding up more friendship connections and subscriptions to the network, they don't increase the time they spend on the News Feed, not enough to balance the evergrowing number of contents.
More competition for limited attention equals a decrease in reach. For most Facebook users, that don't matter much. But for businesses that spend money to advertise on the social network, this is a big deal. The decrease in reach can impact businesses that depend heavily on Facebook for traffic and sales. Furthermore, it even makes it tougher for businesses and community groups to reach users without paying for ads.
When the choice is on Facebook, it has less to no options. What makes Facebook popular and big is its users. Competition is high, and if it can't keep people happy by improvising every bits from the big to the small, people won't be coming back for more.
And in terms of News Feed, there won't be an audience anymore for anyone. For that, Facebook chooses to give friends a higher priority to keep the social network a strong giant for years to come.
At first, people have thought that Facebook decreases advertisers and Pages in order for them to buy more ads. It might be true up to some point, until the inevitable happens. It has too much contents, and it has to prioritize some of them above others.
At some point, the update may give a bad impact to advertisers and Pages. But they can advance by giving out the best, which people actually like, to their audience. If they succeed in doing so, they can reach more people that would spend even more time with them.