Over the time, the social media giant Facebook has been tweaking its News Feed algorithm to shows users exactly what they prefer. Recent changes to its algorithm provide users with stories that are “more personally informative”. Personal preferences of every user will be given importance this time around.
Users will now see more informative stories from their friends, publishers, pages, and others on top of their News Feed. Stories that contain news of users interests will also be moved up. This will give publishers a chance to get on top of the News Feed of users after Facebook preferred friends over publishers in its June update.
In its blog post, Facebook wrote about the new change to its feed: “Something that one person finds informative may be different from what another person finds informative. This could be a news article on a current event, a story about your favorite celebrity, a piece of local news, a review of an upcoming movie, a recipe or anything that informs you.”
Users have previously complained that they do not get to see relevant updates on top of their Feed. The social network conducted thousands of interviews from crowd sourced surveys in its Feed Quality Program. Users were also asked detailed questions about what they prefer in their News Feed and rate their experience.
How Will Facebook Determine Informative Stories?
The Feed Quality department will look into all the stories that most users refer as relevant. They will give rating to these stories with “1” being least informative while “5” being most informative. Facebook will also check stories which get most user engagement and whether there is any news in that story or not. These stories can be related to sports, world politics, cooking recipes, or any other event.
After collecting the data, individual users will be personally checked by the company. This depends on what users like, comment, react, or share on their timeline. This will give them the personal preferences of the users and help Facebook to better predict the stories of the user’s interest. These stories will be different for all users and will also change over the time.
Publishers might benefit from the feature if they come with stories that are of interest to their audience. Some Pages and Publishers might see an increase in their traffic and user engagement while some may witness a decrease. Thus, it is essential for publishers to come up with informative and interesting content.
The current changes in the News Feed come a week after Facebook tweaked changes to its Feed to counter click bait. Publishers who come up with misleading headlines or withhold information will be targeted. Over the time, Facebook has targeted such click baits by pushing them down in the News Feed and promoting more useful content.