Whenever you are on Facebook, has it ever happened to you, that you feel like you are getting too much useless information? Moreover, do you find it really hard to get to the info you are actually lookin for or interested in? Facebook has made updates to the algorithm that determines which stories appear first. News Feed FYI blog posts will highlight mayor updates to News Feed and explain how and why they did that selection of useful info.

What is News Feed?

Lets start off explaining what News Feed really is. Also known as Web Feed, News Feed is a data format used for providing users with frecuently updated content, allowing users to subscribe to it.

As for Facebook, its News Feed´s goal is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. That way, they won´t miss the stories that are important to them. Its aim is to show all the posts people want to see in the order they prefer.

This is no joke. Whenever someone visits News Feed, there are about 1500 stories from either friends, people they follow or Pages for them to see. Most people don´t have enough time to see them all so, obviously, there is a good chance they would miss something they might´ve found interesting.

How does News Feed work?

News Feed knows which of those 1500 stories to show by letting people decide who and what to connect with, by listening to feedback. This is, if a user “likes” something, or “hides” something on Facebook, that tells News Feed whether to show more of it, or display less of it in the future.

By doing this, we end up with only having around 300 stories, instead of 1500, and nearly all of which are of interest to users.

The signals News Feed algorithm responds to from you include:

• How often you interact with a friend, public figure or Page.
• Number of likes, shares and comments a post relieves.
• If you or other people in Facebook hide or report a given post.

The new update: a better way to recover older stories

Facebook announced a few days ago an update to their News Feed ranking problem. Stories that people did not scroll down for enough to see can reappear near the top of News Feed if the stories still get loads of likes and comments.

A recent test was done on a small group of users showed this improves News Feed´s experience. There was a 5% increase in the number of likes, shares and comments on older stories people saw from friends, and an 8% increase on the ones they from Pages.

Befote this update, people read 57% of the tories in their News Feed. The other 43% requested to much scrolling down to see. When the unread stories were resurfaced, the amount of stories read increased to 70%.

What does this mean?

For Page owners, this jeans their most popular organic stories have a higher chanceo f being seen by more people. However, advertisers should bare in mind that this change doesn´t impact how paid content appear in News Feeds.

Take a look at your News Feed on Facebook, and let us know if you notice any improvements! 😉

photo by: blog.grovo.com

photo by: http://on.fb.me/1cIY1qf