Over the next few months, Facebook will update its News Feed algorithm to prioritise posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.
Till now, Facebook has used signals like how many people react to, comment on or share posts to determine how high they appear in News Feed. With this update, Facebook plans to predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about and show these posts higher in feed.
These are posts that inspire back and forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to. It could be a post from a friend seeking advice, a friend asking for recommendations for a trip or a news article or video prompting lots of discussion.
Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook – in fact, live videos, on average, get six times as many interactions as regular videos.
‘With these changes, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect,’ said Facebook in a blog post.
Users who want to see more posts from Pages they follow can choose See First in News Feed Preferences to make sure they always see posts from their favourite Pages.
In December last year, Facebook announced to demote spammy posts that drag users in an ‘engagement bait’ by further goading them to interact with likes, shares, comments and other actions.
