Facebook’s next News Feed update could be bad news for online publishers.
Facebook announced Wednesday it is limiting the amount of content from Pages on News Feeds to allow users to see more posts from family and friends.
Maintaining a relevant and interesting News Feed is important to satisfying users, said Adam Mosseri, vice president for product management at Facebook. Many users, especially those with many connections, told the service important posts from close friends often do not appear on their News Feed, which prompted the company to introduce this new upgrade.
“Stories in News Feed are ranked – so that people can see what they care about first, and don’t miss important stuff from their friends,” Mosseri said in a press release. “One of our most important jobs is getting this ranking right."
Lars Backstom, engineering director at Facebook, acknowledges the update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages, especially those not receiving many shares or interaction. This could mean companies using Facebook to distribute their content, like media publishers, could see a decline in reads.
Facebook also shared their News Feed Values with users in an effort to be transparent on changes. The values include connecting people with posts of family and friends first, while also entertaining and providing informational content from their liked Pages.
“We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about,” Mosseri said in a press release. “We arein the business of connecting people and ideas – and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful.”
Facebook recently came under fire for their lack of transparency when choosing stories for Trending Topics. After a former company employee revealed those who work on the Trending Topics feature deliberately did not promote conservative viewpoints, Facebook made changes to the feature and met with conservative leaders to address the issue.
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