Facebook announced yesterday that it has once again tweaked its News Feed Service in a way in which it says will ensure that only recent content will be posted.
Of the many complaints that users have abut Facebook, a major one has been the irrelevant and often misleading links to news stories posted on their pages. Just last month Facebook announced a new policy to crack down on these misleading links which are known as click bait.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
In a blog post about the new changes, Facebook stated that the purpose of News Feed is to show everyone the right content at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them.
Currently, links are added to News Feed based mostly on how often people click on them. But this is a poor indicator of something’s importance, relevance or popularity because many links are nothing more than click bait and people may only look at the destination for a second or two.
So now the company says that its latest update to News Feed ranking looks at two new factors to determine if a story is more important in the moment than other types of updates. Older posts will be dropped and ones that are about currently trending items, such as sporting events still under way, will be raised up to the top of the list.
Another update takes into account the rate at which people are liking or commenting on a post. Currently one of the signals it looks at is the total number of likes that a post has received when determining how high up to show it in News Feed. Now Facebook says that it is going to begin looking at when people are choosing to like, comment and share.
Facebook has told its users not to worry about any sudden changes to their individual pages. It says that it will slowly introduce the changes and do not expect posts to see significant differences in distribution as a result of this update. If a Page posts about a trending topic or if a post sees a high velocity of engagement early on that then drops off, that post may begin to see increased distribution early on and less distribution over time. Pages should keep producing great content that is relevant and resonates with their audience, the company said.
