I remember a time when I, and probably most people, thought that video would kill the network.
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Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has announced an upgrade to its ever-changing news feed algorithm.
Facebook is starting to get smarter about the videos it is showing its users in its news feed: The social network is starting to take implicit actions into account when weighing whether to show users certain videos in their feed, Facebook’s Meihong Wang and Yue Zhuo wrote in a blog post Monday.
Many people have told us that they enjoy watching videos in News Feed but do not always feel inclined to like, comment or share them.
Facebook would take it for granted that you loved that particular video, even if you don’t like, share or comment. “With this update, we want to show people more of the types of videos they want to see, and fewer of the videos they do not”.
Specifically, it will look at when users choose to turn on sound, make a video full screen, or enable high definition.
The social media site, which now takes in over 4 billion video views per day (up from 1 billion per day in September), began factoring in how long users stayed on specific posts and videos just a couple weeks ago, according to Tech Crunch.
Knowing that many people can enjoy a video without liking, commenting on or sharing it, Facebook is rewarding pages that post videos, but have users turn the volume up or make the video expand to full screen.
The end result of that means more of the videos you want to see (granted that you didn’t unmute or hit the fullscreen button by accident ) at the top of the News Feed, because that’s obviously going to be where more videos get watched. The company says it does not expect Pages to see significant changes in distribution because of the update.
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The change does not appear likely to cause people to see more video in their Facebook feeds.
