This article is more than 1 year old

Facebook fiddles with News Feed algo. Brace yourself for CONTENTGEDDON

Zuck: Always looking for ways of eating a publisher's lunch

Facebook has modified its News Feed algorithm and warned Facebook Page owners that "post reach and referral traffic" could plummet following the overhaul.

The free content ad network said it planned to apply three changes to the News Feed function.

One of those tweaks will apparently make friends' posts more prominent than pages that have been "liked" by users (sorry, people) on the site and app.

It means that news publishers may find it even tougher to win eyeballs from Facebook.

Indeed, the Mark Zuckerberg-run company admitted as much in a blog post announcing the affect of the strategy on Page owners.

Facebook said:

The impact of these changes on your page’s distribution will vary considerably depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity.

In some cases, post reach and referral traffic could potentially decline. Overall, pages should continue to post things that people find meaningful and consider these best practices for driving referral traffic.

Absolutely no one will be surprised to hear that those, er, best practices require Page owners to post loads more stuff on Facebook to see any promised traffic uplift via the site.

Among other things, Facebook vowed that its latest algorithmic fiddle would allow users (sorry, people) to catch more updates from friends who they care about.

In other words, Facebook is presumably closely tracking your chums' pages, as well as posts and photos of theirs that you frequently click on. Zuck's empire will seemingly use this information to better serve up the pals you actually want to see.

Not creepy at all. Nope. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like