Facebook Makes Major Adjustments to "News Feed" Function
On August 7, according to Beijing time, Facebook has just made a major adjustment to the most important feature on this social site — the "News Feed." The "News Feed" is also the first content users see when they log into Facebook.com or open the Facebook app. In general, the purpose of this adjustment is to allow users to see more information and content that they truly like.
Additionally, the News Feed is also a column where Facebook refers to users posting picture information, status updates, links, and shared user information. In fact, the process by which Facebook decides what content to display in a user's News Feed is very complex.
For an average Facebook user, when they open Facebook, they might see about 1,500 "posts" entering this column. So far, Facebook has been using the following procedures to help users sort through this information.
1. It will consider the content of information created since the user last visited Facebook.
2. These pieces of information are scored based on certain criteria. If the person who posted the information is close to the user, that piece of information will receive a higher score. If the information receives a lot of comments or "likes," it can get a higher score. If it's a picture that other friends enjoy looking at, it can also receive a higher score.
3. Next, Facebook can categorize these pieces of information according to their scores.
If the user comes an hour later, Facebook will repeat this process and reconsider all the new information created since the user last logged into Facebook.
However, Facebook has made a major adjustment to the "News Feed" function today. After the new adjustment, when users return to Facebook, Facebook will consider all the information that the user has never browsed during its scoring and ranking calculations, not just the information created since the user's last visit. In fact, this means that if there was information in the user's News Feed before, but the user missed it because they didn't scroll through the feed in time, then the next time the user logs into Facebook, if Facebook determines that those missed pieces of information are more relevant than all the new information created since the user last logged into the site, Facebook will prioritize and display those missed pieces of information so that users can discover them promptly.
Facebook refers to this algorithmic adjustment as "story bumping."
In addition, Facebook announced another significant adjustment to the News Feed: it will start examining the user's last 50 actions on the Facebook site and promote information that appears to be of the greatest current interest to the user. If a user gives a "like" to a specific friend's status update in the morning, then the user will have more chances to view other status updates from that friend throughout the day. Facebook calls this adjustment "Last Actor."
Previously, Facebook had concerns that increasing advertisements on the site might lead to some users leaving. However, the industry believes that after Facebook adjusts the "News Feed" function, it will help alleviate this concern, because as long as users can see more information they like, these users may tolerate more advertisements.