After receiving criticism regarding the absence of current events in the News Feed for its users, Facebook announced that it will begin showing more timely stories on the social network.
The announcement was made by Erich Owens, a Facebook software engineer, and David Vickrey, a Facebook engineering manager, through a post on the Facebook Newsroom.
"Our goal with News Feed is to show everyone the right content at the right time so they don't miss the stories that are important to them. We've heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a Page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example, when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show," stated Facebook.
To address the issue, Facebook will be updating its News Feed ranking to take into account two new factors in determining the importance of a story or an update on a user's News Feed.
The first factor that will be taken into account is the ongoing trends in News Feeds. Facebook will begin to show more timely content high up in the News Feeds of users to reveal which stories or topics are trending, allowing users to see what friends or pages have to say about the topics.
By considering this factor, this means that when a friend or a liked page posts about a trending topic, the post will more likely be seen higher up in the News Feed so that the user will catch it right away.
Early testing of the feature, according to Facebook, shows a 6 percent increase in the engagement of users with these trending posts in the forms of sharing, commenting, or liking the post.
The second factor that will be taken into account is the rate at which other users are liking or commenting on a specific post. While Facebook currently looks at the total likes received by a post to determine its placement in the News Feed, the additional factor will also begin looking at the time when the other users engage the post.
Posts that people engage with right after they are posted, not a few or several hours later, will mean that it is interesting, pushing it up higher in the News Feeds of users. This factor will also be taken into account for stories that are bumped up in the News Feeds of users. Stories that are still being engaged in by many users may not be seen by others because the posts are too far down the News Feed.
Owens and Vickrey wrote that the changes will gradually occur on Facebook, with no significant distribution changes for posts to be expected immediately. However, knowledge of these two new factors will push for pages to create more interesting content to be posted on the social network to receive more exposure in the News Feeds of users.
