Yesterday, Social Barrel reported about BBB’s warning of the dangers of clickbait scams on social media. Now, Facebook has taken an action against it.
Facebook Changed Newsfeed Algorithm to Fight Against Clickbait
In a blog post, Facebook announced:
“We are making an update to News Feed that combines these two signals. News Feed will begin to look at both the probability that you would want to see the story at the top of your feed and the probability that you will like, comment on, click or share a story. We will rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see near the top of their News Feed.”
There’s no doubt that Facebook is a large content provider. It has more than a billion of users who write a considerable amount of content. For that reason, big brands figured that this social networking site is worth spending their money on. In order to optimize the attention of Facebook users and drive traffic to their websites, they use the clickbait strategy.
Since clickbait has its own repercussions, Facebook has released a powerful algorithm to cut the bait.
What does this change mean for the users?
Facebook users will start to see the content that they matter to them most depending on their likes, clicks, shares, and comments. The change in the algorithm is similar to Google’s algorithm. That is, it wants to provide you with the things that you wish to see or it thinks that you want to read.
In other words, you can start seeing news and content that’s worth watching or reading. Now, if a photo is entertaining, it doesn’t need your touch for it to show up to the newsfeed of others. Pages producing worthy content would gain referral traffic and increase reach. As for those who are just trying to trick you, they could endure a drop in those factors.
Facebook has emphasized before that it wants its users to get addicted to its platform. Thus, by changing its newsfeed algorithm, the site will feed the user’s craving but it will do so in a more powerful way. For social media marketers, they will have to find another way to get the attention of Facebook’s billion of users.
Of course, getting them engaged with your content won’t happen overnight. To help Facebook come up with the new algorithm, its team has conducted an extensive research on the subject. It made daily requests to thousands of users to rate their experience as regards to their use of Facebook Newsfeed. This is in addition to people rating a certain post on Facebook.
With the information that the company has gathered, this social networking site will now attempt to present its users higher quality Newsfeed that truly matters to them. You will now see posts that you’ll surely click, like or comment.
However, the changes might not greatly impact most feeds as the algorithm will depend on the posting activity of the user.
What do you think of this change on Facebook Newsfeed? Do you think it would help you use the networking site more?
