Businesses beware, Facebook is planning to make yet more changes to its News Feed – opting to favour posts shared by friends and family over those from brands and publishers.
That means when you fire up Facebook in the coming weeks, many of the stories and videos you see will be there because your friends have shared them, not because a company whose page you’ve ‘Liked’ posted an update.
With publishers depending on Facebook more than ever before to build steady audiences, the change will undoubtedly impact our ability to reach the unknown.
For brands, the change doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in engagement. It does, however, mean that publishers will increased pressure to create content that is, above all else, “shareable”. That would seem to favour entertainment-based content and viral nuggets above boring-but-important news.
From the user’s perspective, the change means that Facebook will become THE place to discuss stories that your friends are talking about (if it wasn’t already!).
In an announcement made on the network’s Newsroom platform, Facebook’s Director for News Feed, Adam Mosseri said: “Facebook doesn’t favour specific sources or ideas. The feed is there to inform and entertain.
“People expect the stories in their feed to be meaningful to them — and we have learned over time that people value stories that they consider informative and entertaining.
“We’re always working to better understand what is interesting and informative to you personally, so those stories appear higher up in your feed.”
The change aims to serve the network’s goal further, serving up more of the stories each of its 1.6 billion users want to see and, of course, encouraging them to spend more time on Facebook. Exactly how this will affect brands and and publishers isn’t clear, but for them, one thing hasn’t changed: when it comes to content, the Facebook share is king.
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