New Facebook News Feed Algorithm Affected By Time
Have you ever wondered why certain stories appear in your Facebook News Feed?
Facebook software engineers Ansha Yu and Sami Tas announced the latest change to the behind-the-scenes factors responsible for determining which posts are seen by users in their News Feeds.
The Added Component: Time
The social network has recently tweaked their News Feed algorithm to factor in the amount of time users spend viewing stories.
The engineers designed the algorithm to measure how many seconds a user spends looking at a specific story compared to the time spent on other posts on their Feed. If that user spends significantly more time on a particular story than the majority of other stories, the new algorithm will consider that post as relevant to them.
Prior to this algorithm update the posts shown on each user’s News Feed were determined primarily by how many Likes, Shares and comments they received by Facebook friends and other users.
The Need For Change
The theory behind the new algorithm believes that just because Facebook users don’t directly take action on a post doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t interested in what they read.
In certain circumstances, users want to read information pertaining to a current event, but might pass on Liking or adding a comment.
For example, after scrolling through your News Feed you may come across a post that one of your Facebook friends shared about their recent experience at a tournament. The post details the games and overall experience – it even includes a few photos.
You might not feel inclined to Like or comment on the post, but based on the fact that you didn’t continue quickly scrolling straight past it and viewed it for a longer amount of time than you spent on the surrounding posts indicates to the new algorithm that it was something you found interesting. Similar posts may start to show more prominently for you in the future.
With the change comes hope that more meaningful stories will appear in News Feeds.
How do you think this will affect your organization’s Facebook efforts? Share with us in the comments below!
Reach out to Demosphere today for assistance integrating social media sites directly onto your organization’s WebWriter website at support@blog.demosphere.com.
