Facebook to Show Users More from Friends and Family than Publishers

CBC

On Facebook, you get used to pretty much always having your feed overwhelmed by publishers posts and having to trawl through them to find something you actually care about. As annoying as it is, you kind of put up with it as you know these businesses have to post like that to get attention. Facebook have now decided that this isn't necessary anymore though and are changing the algorithm so that we'll see more of our friends and family's posts than we will publishers.

For publishers, this will either not matter or will be a drastic change. Depending on the publisher, they may be seen a lot less, leading to fewer referrals. Facebook send a lot of traffic towards the sites that use their services and that isn't likely to change, but Facebook is realising that their site is getting a lot less social. They want to find more ways to keep users' activity within their own services, and this is simply another step in that direction. This could be a problem for publishers as according to digital analytics company Parse.ly, a small but noticeable decline could cause some publications to lose more of those referrals. Facebook's changes in the past have caused some publications to close so this is at risk of happening again.

The changes in the algorithm mean that users will now see content from their family and friends first, then informative content and then entertaining content. This means that you will still see the posts from these publications, they just won't be the first things you see which could be an improvement. Due to them being further down, this means that fewer publications will be seen, but it could encourage publications to share better quality content than they may have before.

Facebook are hoping that this will encourage general users to actually post more original content. If their friends and families are more likely to see it, then there will be a good reason to share it. Facebook do want users sharing publications' posts, instant articles and other websites, but they want to see what the users want to say about their own lives as well.