In a move to make your News Feed more informative, Facebook has tweaked its algorithm to bring news that’s relevant and of interest to you.
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How Does Facebook Define “Informative”?
“But if what they see is either not interesting enough or actively turning them off, that’s obviously bad news”, says Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research. 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.
“Our goal with News Feed is to show people the stories most relevant to them, so we rank stories so what’s most important to each person shows up highest in their News Feeds”, said Facebook in a blog post on Friday. They will give rating to these stories with “1” being least informative while “5” being most informative. These stories can be related to sports, world politics, cooking recipes, or any other event. This depends on what users like, comment, react, or share on their timeline. Informative stories are therefore different for each person and will likely change over time. One strong argument against it is that by offering people only what they already like or support, Facebook reduces users’ chances of discovering something new and informative.
Publishers might benefit from the feature if they come with stories that are of interest to their audience. The latest update to Facebook’s news feed algorithm comes only a month-and-a-half after it updated the algorithm to emphasize posts from users’ friends and family, including photos, videos, status updates and links.
With the last two algorithm updates, Facebook has been emphasizing the user experience.
Increases and decreases in traffic to any individual pages should be “minor”, they predict.
Facebook is once again upgrading its News Feed in an effort to further distance you from clickbait by instead placing the emphasis on enlightening content.
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The latest change will put the onus on users, brands and publishers to post content that users find informative.
