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As users complained that the important updates from their friends and families tend to get lost in the realm of posts from publishers and advertisers, Facebook decided to change the newsfeed priorities.
The company officials said that the newsfeed algorithm will be modified in the next weeks in order to reorganize the order of the posts that appear on the main screen of the application.
People First
Facebook wants to keep its main purpose of connecting people with what is most important to them, friends, places, events and things, but with a focus on friends and family.
The newsfeed priorities will become posts that offer information and that are entertaining.
The updates will start to be active starting with Wednesday, when a part of the pages will be lowered in referrals. The pages are under a particular attention because they are in general held by public figures, publishers, businesses or organizations.
However, Facebook said that the pages that have a traffic driven by user sharing will still have a higher rank in the newsfeed than the ones that gain popularity only through their posts alone.
Newsfeed Priorities Algorithm
The company started to modify the newsfeed algorithm one year ago. The previous changes included a push for photos, videos and status updates from friends. The number of posts about friends’ virtual actions was limited. Also, the programmers relaxed the rule against consecutive feeds belonging to one single person, which permitted users to have almost infinite number of posts in their newsfeed.
Facebook continuously tries to make the flow of post to be more and more relevant for the user. The algorithm aims to learn what are a person’s interest and best friends, either by directly asking the user or by monitoring its online pattern of actions.
While the last year’s changes focused on the user experience, this time Facebook will try to make the content concentrate more on people than on companies, organizations or public figures.
The algorithm will adapt according to the user’s behavior, which means that if a person will receive more likes and reactions, it will have priority in the newsfeed.
Facebook needs to scan thousands of stories when building a newsfeed, and even if an average user spends 50 minutes each day online it could never discover everything that is posted online by pages, friends and events they added under their profile.
Image Source: Pixabay
