This article was published on January 21, 2014

Facebook tweaks News Feed algorithm to promote link share posts from Pages over text status updates


Facebook tweaks News Feed algorithm to promote link share posts from Pages over text status updates

Facebook today announced a change to its News Feed algorithm that tweaks which story types it shows from Pages. The company is promising a decrease in the distribution of text status updates from Pages but also says Page administrators can expect “some increases in engagement and distribution” for other story types.

While Facebook says it’s difficult to answer the question “What kind of content should I post on my Page?” as it depends on who your audience is and what they want to see, the changes rolling out do make one thing clear. “In general, we recommend that you use the story type that best fits the message that you want to tell – whether that’s a status, photo, link or video,” the company emphasizes.

Nevertheless, Page administrators should decrease these types of posts, where the link is embedded in the status update:

text_status_update

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On the other hand, they should increase link share posts like this:

link_share_post

Facebook says that when compared to sharing links by embedding them in status updates, link share posts get more engagement (more Likes, comments, shares, and clicks). They also provide “a more visual and compelling experience” in the News Feed, as you can see above.

Facebook explains that this change came out of recent testing that concluded when people see more text status updates on the social network, they write more status updates themselves. The company says it saw on average 9 million more status updates written each day when it started showing more text status updates from friends, and so it started showing people more text status updates in their News Feed.

On the other hand, Facebook found this effect wasn’t true for text status updates from Pages. This led to the latest change to News Feed ranking, announced today, that treats text status updates from Pages as a different category to text status updates from friends.

All in all, the company says this will help it show people more content they want to see. I think it’s fair to say Facebook users will be the judge of that.

See also – Facebook tweaks News Feed to surface more articles and fewer memes, resurface stories when friends comment

Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/GettyImages

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