Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) will change the algorithms that determine what type of posts should appear on the News Feed of users. The social network giant announced that it wanted to show the stories that matter the most to users, according to their preferences and the things they click.
Cheng Zhang and Si Chen, who are software engineers at Facebook, said in press release on Monday that the company has analyzed data from surveys filled by thousands of people around the world. As a result, the team of researchers will work to enhance the way Facebook make recommendations, since there are some posts that people do not usually like or comment, but they are still interested in them.
“News Feed will begin to look at both the probability that you would want to see the story at the top of your feed and the probability that you will like, comment on, click or share a story. We will rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see near the top of their News Feed,” wrote the team of software engineers on Monday.
According to Facebook, which has 1.59 billion active users per month, the new algorithms should not affect or change meaningfully the impact and traffic of most Facebook Pages, since the composition of the audience and the posting activity will be the new factors that will be taken into account to determine the story’s distribution.
Users’ preferences will be continuously evaluated by Facebook, as a result, several Pages will probably register some declines in referral traffic, but it will depend on the ratings of people, who will have the option of qualifying some posts by clicking on stars depending on how much they want them to appear in their the News Feed.
Managers of Pages should avoid inviting people to take actions such as making clicks or sharing contents, Facebook said. It was reported that doing so will cause a temporary spike in metrics, however, it will be rebalanced after people decide if they want to see that type of posts.
The social network led by the young entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg announced that it will continue to analyze increases and declines in referral traffic, in order to learn which are the factors that determine the success of a post. That being said, Pages should publish meaningful content based on their audiences.
Source: Facebook Newsroom