Facebook is making news items more prominent in its News Feed, as the social network looks to challenge Twitter as the site of choice for discussions about current events. Facebook surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favourite sports team or shared interests, to the latest […]
Facebook is making news items more prominent in its News Feed, as the social network looks to challenge Twitter as the site of choice for discussions about current events.
Facebook surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favourite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme.
As such Facebook is focusing on distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile.
See an example below:
This means that high quality articles may show up more prominently in a users’ News Feed, and ‘meme photos’ may show up less prominently.
To complement people’s interest in articles, Facebook has recently started to display people additional articles similar to ones they had just read.
Soon, after a user clicks on a link to an article, they may see up to three related articles directly below the News Feed post to help them discover more content they may find interesting.
In a blog post, the social media giant introduced a new feature to the famed News Feed. “The goal of News Feed is to show the right content to the right people at the right time whether it’s from a close friend or a news source halfway across the world. In the last year, more people found news on Facebook than ever before. In fact, as reported in October, average referral traffic from Facebook to media sites has increased by over 170% – almost tripled – in the past year. Today’s update to News Feed ranking recognizes that people want to see more relevant news and what their friends have to say about it.”
Read the blog announcement here
