Talk more on Facebook, news feeds can wait
las vegas — Facebook on Thursday announced a major update that will put friends and family above pages or celebrities in a user’s news feed — and likely result in people spending less time on the leading social network.
The change to the way Facebook ranks posts will put more weight on social interactions and relationships, according to News Feed product manager John Hegeman.
“This is a big change,” Hegeman said.
“People will actually spend less time on Facebook, but we feel good about that because it will make the time they do spend more valuable, and be good for our business in the end.”
For example, a family video clip posted by a spouse will be deemed more worthy of attention than a snippet from a star or favourite restaurant.
“We think people interaction is more important than passively consuming content,” Hegeman said. “This will be one of the more important updates that we have made.”
Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg has said that bringing people together and strengthening communities in the real world are priorities.
The news feed ranking update, which is set to roll out globally in the coming weeks, is expected to support that goal. “As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media,” Zuckerberg said in a post at his Facebook page.
“And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.” —
Facebook began to change the way it filters posts and videos on its centerpiece News Feed, the start of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be a series of changes in the design of the world’s largest social network.
san francisco — Facebook Inc on Thursday began to change the way it filters posts and videos on its centerpiece News Feed, the start of what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said would be a series of changes in the design of the world’s largest social network.
Zuckerberg, in a sweeping post on Facebook, said the company would change the filter for the News Feed to prioritise what friends and family share, while reducing the amount of non-advertising content from publishers and brands.
Facebook, which owns four of the world’s most popular smartphone apps including Instagram, has for years prioritised material that its complex computer algorithms think people will engage with through comments, “likes” or other ways of showing interest.
Zuckerberg, the company’s 33-year-old co-founder, said that would no longer be the goal.
“I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The shift was likely to mean that the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement would go down in the short term, he wrote, but he added it would be better for users and for the business over the long term. Advertising on the social network would be unaffected by the changes, John Hegeman, a Facebook vice-president, said in an interview.
Facebook and its social media competitors have been inundated by criticism that their products reinforce users’ views on social and political issues and lead to addictive viewing habits, raising questions about possible regulation and the businesses’ longterm viability.
The company has been criticised for algorithms that may have prioritised misleading news and misinformation in people’s feeds, influencing the 2016 American presidential election, as well as political discourse in many countries. Last year, Facebook disclosed that Russian agents had used the network to spread inflammatory posts to polarise the American electorate. Congress is expected to hold more hearings this month, questioning the role social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube play in spreading propaganda.
Zuckerberg said an overhaul of the company’s products, beginning with changes to the algorithms that control the News Feed,
I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions Mark Zuckerberg, Chief executive, Facebook
would help to address those concerns. Similar changes will be made to other products in the coming months, he said.
“We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s wellbeing,” Zuckerberg wrote.
With more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook is the world’s largest social media network. It is also among the world’s largest corporations, reporting $36 billion in revenue, mostly from advertising, during the 12 months that ended on September 30.
A shift away from non-ad content produced by businesses is a potentially severe blow to news organisations, many of which use Facebook to drive readership, but Zuckerberg said many such posts have been unhealthy.
“Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience,” he wrote. — Reuters