Facebook To Become More News-Centric With An Emphasis On Smartphone Users

In October, a Pew Research Center report was released showing that 30-percent of American adults on Facebook get at least part of their news through the social network. That number may grow in the coming months, with Facebook announcing today that it will be showing more news links, particularly for those who are accessing the social network through a smartphone.

Facebook says in its announcement that this is to further refine the News Feed so that it gives users what they want to see when they want to see it. The social network points out some statistics from October related to increased referral traffic from the site, and, of course, the Pew Research Center report shows that news is important to a large cross section of Facebook users.

Facebook says that it will be targeting high-quality content, and that users on smartphones will be seeing those links appear in their News Feed a tad more often than they do on the desktop. Memes are getting the short end of the stick, and will be showing up less, being lower-quality content that the social network has identified as less wanted by its users over news content.

The news links will be related to users various interests, and Facebook says that it noticed that individuals prefer to see content about their favorite sports teams, high-quality current events news, and shared interests, among other things. Now when users click on a link, they may be served up to three related links beneath it following the update.

VIA: CNET