Facebook made changes to its News Feed some time ago, those changes were not liked very much by users. Hence, the company has decided to make changes to it again. This time, the company plans to update the News Feeds to highlight the links to the sites it thinks users want to look at, says TechCrunch.
Using feedback to improve News Feeds
Facebook’s latest update is part of its “Feed Quality Program,” which aims to improve the News Feed experience for all users. The company asks thousands of randomly selected users on a daily basis if they like the content in their News Feed and uses this data to adjust its algorithms to suit their preferences.
Facebook says the research helps it learn a lot of things about users, and the biggest and most important thing is that it is not possible to determine what is most meaningful to users with the help of just their likes, clicks, comments or sharing of posts.
For example, people rarely interact with articles about a serious current event or sad news from a friend, but this does not mean they do not want it in their News Feed. This is because it is not possible to like or comment on everything.
Facebook to calculate time a user spends on a link
Facebook uses certain core signals to rank feeds, and this update adds to them. Such signals include the interest a viewer has in an authors’ content, the performance of a certain post with other users, the strength of past posts of an author, and the type of content.
Facebook realized that the amount of time users spend on watching or reading the content they click on is a strong indicator of the type of content they are interested in, and the company is using this as the basis for the biggest adjustment it is rolling out, the report says.
This means that now Facebook will calculate the time a user spends on a mobile link of an Instant Article after the content stops loading. Sites and articles where users spend more time will be given a higher place in News Feeds and more frequency, while the ones users quickly ditch will be demoted, the report says.
With this, the company will be able to continue to fight clickbait and will also give a boost to the high-quality content people can’t look away from. Promoting the diversity of Pages in a user’s News Feed is also something the company is working on.
