Facebook tweaks News Feed to show more relevant stories

PanARMENIAN.Net - Facebook has once again tweaked its News Feed algorithm with the goal of improving the articles, posts, and stories that are most relevant to users. Starting Monday, February 1, the social networking company said it’s looking at two new signals: the probability people will want to see a story at the top of the News Feed and the likelihood they will take some sort of action on it, VentureBeat reports.

In a blog post, Facebook software engineers explained that the inclusion of these signals came as a result of a survey Facebook conducted with its Feed Quality panel. This 1,000-plus member group is tasked with helping the company figure out how to improve the News Feed by sharing their daily experiences. Based on its research, Facebook learned that a better experience was reported when stories shown at the top of the feed are ones they are “likely to rate highly if asked and likely to engage with.”

Among the many tweaks that Facebook has made is enabling users to stipulate which friends they deem to be more important — this signal is used to tell Facebook what updates people always want to see at the top.

Previous updates also include putting more importance on status updates and Pages you’ve liked versus those that your friends have liked, and also limiting hoaxes from showing up in the News Feed.

Facebook said that “in general, this update should not impact reach or referral traffic meaningfully for the majority of Pages,” but does caution that some may see some effects in traffic. The company also said that Page administrators should avoid encouraging fans to take action such as making numerous clicks because that will result in “temporary spikes in metrics that might then be rebalanced by feed’s ranking over time.”