Facebook Changing News Feed To Be Timely, Topical

Facebook is a good way to find news (you can find us there, too!), but has faced quite a bit of criticism for not providing timely posts. Today, Facebook is announcing changes to their news feed that will provide users with topical info that is popular, and not simply a sampling of everything in your feed.

In both examining "Likes" and trending topics, Facebook wants to push you information that matters, when it matters. Trending topics will focus on re-shares, or when a contact discusses something that is popular across Facebook.

Likes is morphing to account for the timeliness of thumbs-ups, not so much the quantity. If you're late to the Facebook thread, and a post has lost steam by the time you get there, it's possible you might not see it at all. If a post gets a lot of Likes upfront, but fizzles out over a few hours, it will likely start vanishing from your feed.

If a post doesn't vanish from your feed, Facebook may still "bump" it, which is their practice of re-surfacing older stories that you didn't scroll down far enough to see, but still had a lot of engagement.

The aim is to be important in the moment, not a placeholder for any items of discussion. It's a slippery slope of when to be fast and break things, and when to slow down and feed users the right info. Still, Facebook's feed faces a lot of competition, so it will be interesting to see how this improves your experience there.

Source: Facebook