Another week and another round of tweaks are hitting Facebook, this time the social networking site says it's all about giving members what they want in the News Feed and providing a better balance in content delivery.
"This means we need to give you the right mix of updates from friends and public figures, publishers, businesses and community organizations you are connected to. This balance is different for everyone depending on what people are most interested in learning about every day," stated Max Eulenstein, product manager, and Lauren Scissors, user experience researcher, in a Facebook blog post.
Toward that goal, and claiming the tweaks are tied to member feedback and users rating personal News Feeds to provide improvement insight, Facebook is making three adjustments.
The first is for those members whose feeds are a bit thin in terms of content. There will be more posts from the same source if need be to fill out the feed. Facebook is relaxing rules that had prevented multiple posts from the same source.
"Now if you run out of content, but want to spend more time in News Feed, you'll see more," states the blog.
The second change is all about prioritizing news that's most personal and connected to the member and putting it front and center ahead of content that may not be as relevant. Facebook says members were worried about missing important news from important friends.
"This update tries to make the balance of content the right one for each individual person," Eulenstein and Scissors explain.
The third change is a bit perplexing given the social site has always been about users 'liking' each other's posts and shared content. Apparently, users don't like seeing what their friends like or what they are commenting on, so that activity will be pushed way down in the News Feed.
The three changes, which are pretty substantial given Facebook's continuous efforts to engage members, keep users on site longer. Driving more interaction beyond posting and sharing will impact users differently. Facebook notes that the changes may impact post reach and referral traffic on the negative side.
As one media report notes the tweaks will likely slow what is called referral traffic and that may be deliberate given reports that the social networking site is supposedly talking with media companies about hosting this type of content for deeper customization.
