Gone are the days when Facebook showed you every post from every friend. Here's a look at Facebook's latest News Feed algorithm changes and how they affect the content you see.
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Once upon a time, Facebook showed you every post from every Friend and Page you followed. But as Facebook -- and your own network -- grew, it added an element to eliminate clutter and serve you the most relevant content: its News Feed algorithm.
Facebook gives you two ways to sort your News Feed: either by top stories, which prioritizes popular content, or by most recent, which prioritizes a combination of the newest posts with your Friends' latest comments. You can flip between these views by clicking the News Feed dropdown menu from your left-side navigation.
[Facebook's latest privacy changes include some welcome improvements. Read Facebook Privacy: 10 Settings To Check.]
Whether you love or loathe Facebook's algorithm, it's here to stay, and the social network maintains that the changes it makes are designed to benefit you.
'The goal of News Feed is to show the right content to the right people at the right time, whether it's from a close friend or a news source halfway across the world,' Facebook's Varun Kacholia, engineering manager, and Minwen Ji, software engineer, wrote in a December blog post.
Facebook has made a number of changes to the way it serves you videos, news, ads, and memes over the past few months. Here's a look at its most significant algorithm updates and how they affect the content you see in your News Feed.
1. Facebook serves you less spam The network announced plans in April to crack down on the spammy content that clutters users' News Feeds, such as photos or videos that users and Pages repeatedly upload and posts that explicitly ask users to comment or Like.
'We are improving News Feed to deemphasize these Pages, and our early testing shows that this change causes people to hide 10% fewer stories from Pages overall,' Facebook said in an blog post when the plan was announced. 'Over time, these stories lead to a less enjoyable experience of Facebook since they drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.'
2. Facebook shows you fewer ads
To reduce the noise in users' News Feeds, Facebook targeted 'like-baiting' posts from people and Pages, which ask readers to Like, comment, or share the post in order to get more distribution. According to Facebook, these types of posts are 15% less relevant than other stories with a comparable number of Likes, comments, and shares.
Soon you'll see fewer of the ads that appear on the right side of your News Feed, Facebook announced this week. That's good news for users but bad news for marketers. The change also means these ads will cost businesses more.
'The redesign of right-hand column ads is part of an ongoing initiative to improve our ads in general,' Facebook said when that change was announced. 'These results suggest that we're on the right path: People are finding the new right-hand column ads more engaging, and advertisers therefore are getting more value for their ad impressions.'
Because Facebook will serve users fewer right-hand-column ads, competition for ad space will increase -- as will the prices, the social network said. It would not say how much more marketers should expect to pay, but it acknowledged that all businesses may not welcome the price bump.
3. Expect to see more videos -- if you watch them Because twice as many people watch videos on Facebook now as did just six months ago, Facebook announced a few updates this week that impact
Kristin Burnham currently serves as InformationWeek.com's Senior Editor, covering social media, social business, IT leadership and IT careers. Prior to joining InformationWeek in July 2013, she served in a number of roles at CIO magazine and CIO.com, most recently as senior ... View Full Bio
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