As you’d expect from a company with nearly limitless development resources at their disposal, Facebook is not frightened to mix things up a bit when it comes to tinkering about with their news feed functionality.
In a recent post aimed at small business owners, Facebook spelt out exactly what their aims were with their latest set of revisions;
According to their post, Facebook has been trying to:
- Help content (that is deemed to be appropriate) to be diverted to Facebook users who would regard it as relevant to their personal preferences.
- Assist Facebook users in discovering content which they would otherwise miss, if it was brought to the feed in purely chronological order.
- Bring news feed content to users in a sequence which will be ranked in order of how important it will be to each individual.
Shortly after updates were applied to the social networking giant’s newsfeed algorithms, comments from Facebook users across the globe started to light up the web like a Christmas tree;
It would seem that Facebook’s news feed updates would have a truly polarising effect:
- A number of users absolutely loved how the changes had been executed: These individuals felt that the new algorithm made it easier for them to get an overview of relevant posts at a glance, without having to manually sort through a mountain of unimportant stories.
- Some users complained that the update made their news feeds less relevant to their interests, whilst others disliked the apparent lack of structure in the way that stories would be brought to their attention, which they frequently described as being unpredictable, messy and random.
- Numerous users stated that they’d prefer to have the option available to sort their feed in chronological order, or by using some other kind of filter which is not based upon the new algorithm.
How does it work?
Essentially, Facebook’s recent update to its news feed functionality has been a pretty big move: Each user that visits their news feed could potentially end up with hundreds of stories being thrown at them from their contacts throughout the day;
Whilst some users had no problem in browsing through this sea of information, Facebook’s research indicated that many users were missing out on important, relevant posts, simply because they logged in too late and didn’t fancy browsing through them.
How it all works…
The update to Facebook’s algorithm was designed to react to indications made by you when using the social network, which can include:
- How frequently you interact with contacts who make posts on your news feed: This could include actions such as ‘liking’ or adding a comment on a post
- The amount of likes/shares/comments that a news feed post receives from the Facebook community at large, with particular emphasis on your personal contacts
- How often you interact with each specific category of post, including whether or not you choose to ‘hide’ certain content
Check out our Social Media Marketing package to give give your online marketing campaign a pick-me-up.
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