Facebook Plans Major Changes to News Feed This Year
Facebook has announced some major updates coming to their news feed this year, and Mark Zuckerberg's goal is to "bring us closer together with the people who matter to us." The social media platform is planning to do just that by tweaking their post ranking methods.
Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed for Facebook, made the announcement on Thursday, Jan. 11, via their newsroom site. Standing as the focus for their new initiative is an announcement made by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the same day.
"We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us," Zuckerberg said in his message, adding that recent trends have made content from businesses, brands and the media a bigger presence in the news feed of Facebook users.
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"Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do -- help us connect with each other," he explained.
To attempt to remedy this, Facebook is planning an update that will make posts that "spark conversations and meaningful interactions" take priority in the news feed of its users. At the same time, posts form family and friends will be given priority over public content as well, according to Mosseri.
"Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed," Mosseri continued, adding an example that live videos, or videos in general, could be the ones that will lead viewers to discussions and thus will place higher in the feed.
The result, as Zuckerberg explained in his note, will be less posts from business pages, as well as those from media outlets.
