Facebook shifts News Feed, gives priority to friends

WASHINGTON: Social network Facebook said Tuesday it was reconfiguring its News Feed, in a shift targeted at providing people with more information about what is occurring to “the friends you care about.”
The world’s greatest online community revealed changes which reduce dependency on “referral” traffic — or the discussing of news content or other material.
“The goal of News Feed is to show you the content that matters to you,” said a blog post by Facebook’s Max Eulenstein and Lauren Scissors.
One of the key changes is designed “to make sure that material published straight by the friends you care about, such as images, video clips, status up-dates or links, will be greater up in Details Nourish so you are less likely to skip it,” the blog said.
To make room, Facebook will force down items such as comments on a report or another person’s publish.
“Many people have informed us they don’t appreciate seeing experiences about their buddies preference or leaving comments on a publish,” Facebook said.
“This upgrade will create these experiences appear reduced down in News Feed or not at all, so you are more likely to see the things you proper worry about straight from buddies and the webpages you have liked.”
Facebook also will rest its previous rule that avoided individuals from seeing several content from the same resource.
This modify is targeted at “improving the experience for individuals who don’t have a lot of material available to see,” Eulenstein and Scissers had written.
“Previously, we had guidelines in place to avoid you from seeing multiple content from the same resource in a row. With this upgrade, we are soothing this concept. Now if you run out of content, but want to take more time in News Feed, you’ll see more.”
While the changes could generate down the so-called referral traffic– such as content distributed from magazines/newspapers — Facebook is revealed to be in speaks with media organizations to variety this material in an attempt to better focus on news at particular visitors.
Source: Yahoo News