Count the minutes until Cha-cha- More changes to Facebook time

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Submitted by Patti Peek Neumann on Thu, 03/07/2013 - 10:50am

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Cha-cha- more changes to facebook time. And it is coming in the next 24 hours! In a big push to keep revenues generating, Facebook is about to tweak and change our facebook again...

Facebook's comments on the outbreak of public 'dislike:'

QUOTE: Our goal with News Feed is always to show each individual the most relevant blend of stories that maximizes engagement and interest.

There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algorithm suppresses organic distribution of posts in favor of paid posts in order to increase our revenue. This is not true. We want to clear up any misconceptions by explaining how the News Feed algorithm works.

First, in aggregate, engagement – likes, comments, shares – has gone up for most people who have turned the Follow feature on. In fact, overall engagement on posts from people with followers has gone up 34% year over year.

Second, a few data points should not be taken as representative of what actually is happening overall. There are numerous factors that may affect distribution, including quality and number of posts.

News Feed shows the most relevant stories from your friends, people you follow and Pages you are connected to. In fact, the News Feed algorithm is separate from the advertising algorithm in that we don't replace the most engaging posts in News Feed with sponsored ones.

Some other points for context:

The argument here is based on a few anecdotes of one post from one year to a totally different post from another year.
- This is an apples-to-oranges comparison; you can’t compare engagement rates on two different posts year over year.

These anecdotes are taken as representative of what is happening overall.
- In fact, the opposite is happening overall – engagement has gone up 34% on posts from people who have more than 10,000 followers.

In the fall we made a quality adjustment to the News Feed algorithm to reduce negative feedback on stories from people. This meant that some Pages saw a drop in reach on their less engaging posts. Overall, Pages saw no impact to their median reach. In fact, data show that people engaged with more content in News Feed as the quality of the content they saw improved.

For early adopters of Follow, we do see instances where their follower numbers have gone up but their engagement has gone down from a year ago.
- When we first launched Follow, the press coverage combined with our marketing efforts drove large adoption. A lot of users started following public figures who had turned on Follow.
- Over time, some of those users engaged less with those figures, and so we started showing fewer stories from those figures to users who didn't engage as much with their stories.
- The News Feed changes we made in the fall to focus on higher quality stories may have also decreased the distribution for less engaging stories from public figures.

In the past six months, however, we have introduced changes to solve the above instance – the goal being to promote more content from public figures. These include organic units in NF such as "most shared on <publisher>," "most shared about <topic>," and redesigned feed stories for link shares that feature larger images and longer descriptions. Our index of partners has already seen a significant increase in traffic (35%) due to the introduction of these units.

We are constantly working to improve people’s experience with News Feed, and changes like the above we think will surface more of the right posts to the right people.

Some changes of note taken from The Huffington Post article by Craig Kanalley

September 2006
News Feed Launches
Facebook blog: The News Feed launches (screenshot below). It's introduced as a feed that "highlights what's happening in your social circles on Facebook," personalizing stories for users throughout the day.

September 2006
Advanced Privacy Controls Launch
Mashable: In response to backlash on privacy implications of News Feed, Mark Zuckerberg posts, "We really messed this one up," and introduces advanced controls for setting what appears and what doesn't.

November 2007
Call For Feedback
Facebook blog: News Feed begins showing a thumbs up icon and an 'x' next to posts so users can provide feedback on what content they like seeing and what they don't like seeing. Facebook said it would use the feedback to make changes to how News Feed works.

July 2008
News Feed Preferences
InsideFacebook: Facebook adds the ability for users to say they want more or less of certain types of content in News feed. They can choose to receive "More about" or "Less about" certain friends.

March 2009
Real-Time Updates
Facebook blog: With an eye on the rise of Twitter, Facebook turns its homepage real-time, making News Feed update chronologically in a major home page redesign.

October 2009
Personalized For You
GigaOm: Facebook changes its default stream to an algorithm-based one, displaying popular or engaging content since you last logged on to the social network. Some protested this, wishing to see updates chronologically.

December 2010
Filtering Launches
Mashable: The "Most Recent" tab can now filter by status updates, photos, links, pages, or games.

February 2011
All Friends Or Closest Friends
InsideFacebook: Facebook adds the ability to see content from all of your friends and pages you like in News Feed or just your closest friends and pages you interact with most.

September 2011
Top Stories Introduced
Facebook blog: The News Feed started elevating stories it believes most matter to you. These are displayed at the top with the header "Top Story." Facebook said the change was designed to make the social network more like a "personalized newspaper."
Real-Time Ticker
TechCrunch: Facebook also debuts a real-time ticker alongside the News Feed of activity amongst your friends and pages you like.

January 2012
Ads Introduced
ZDNet: Facebook begins showing ads in News Feed under the term "Featured" or "Sponsored."

March 2013
News Feed Announcement
This leads to the News Feed announcement on March 7. What will be announced? TechCrunch believes it will be content-specific news feeds, like a music-only stream for instance, bigger photos and ads.

The only constant is change. You might be frustrated, but remember, Facebook is a free service for the average user. Over one BILLION of us! Connect with me www.facebook.com/CITYPEEKpatti

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