Facebook Reveals New Policy For Its News Feed & Timeline

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The latest update to Facebook’s News Feed directs to answer the common problem of seeing old posts on the platform.

In a official blog post, Facebook software engineers Erich Owens and David Vickrey admitted that the current News Feed often isn’t as fresh as it could be:

Our goal with News Feed is to show everyone the right content at the right time so they don’t miss the stories that are important to them. We’ve heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a Page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show. There are also times when a post that is a day or two old may not be relevant to you anymore. Our latest update to News Feed ranking looks at two new factors to determine if a story is more important in the moment than other types of updates.

As a part of the update, Facebook will give greater priority to users’ posts that tie in with its trending list. It means that when a friend or Page you are connected to posts about something that is currently a hot topic of conversation on Facebook, that post is more likely to appear higher up in News Feed. This way, you can see it sooner which is quite similar to Trending Topics feature on Twitter. The latest testing revealed that such posts got a 6% jump in engagement.

Perhaps Facebook’s biggest change to News Feed is considering the timeliness of posts:

“The second update takes into account the rate at which people are liking or commenting on a post. Currently one of the signals we look at is the total number of likes that a post has received when determining how high up to to show it in News Feed. With this update, we are going to begin looking at when people are choosing to like, comment and share. If people are engaging with the post right after it is posted, and not as much a few hours later, this suggests that the post was most interesting at the time it was posted, but potentially less interesting at a later date. Based on this signal it is more likely to appear higher in News Feed earlier on and lower at a later date.”

Facebook officials stated that the timeline will also influence which stories get a “bump up” in News Feed.