Facebook has made an update to its News Feed algorithms so so that users will see more content from family and friends.
The new prioritization of content means that there will be a better balance between how much content appears from friends and brands.
Facebook said that the goal of the News Feed is to show “the right mix of updates from friends and public figures, publishers, businesses and community organizations” that a user is connected to.
Content posted directly by the friends of a user, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will now appear higher up in News Feed.
In addition, the social media giant said that many of its users said that they don’t like seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post. These stories will now appear lower down in News Feed or not at all.
In a blog post the company said to page owners:
“The impact of these changes on your page’s distribution will vary considerably depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity.
“In some cases, post reach and referral traffic could potentially decline. Overall, pages should continue to post things that people find meaningful and consider these best practices for driving referral traffic.”
This change is said to be disadvantageous for some businesses such as Media houses – who want maximum exposure of their news stories.
The site is also relaxing rules in place to prevent users from seeing multiple posts from the same source in a row.
The company said:
“Now if you run out of content, but want to spend more time in News Feed, you’ll see more (from the same users).”
