Facebook is changing the news feed: What it means for you as a user

The social media tech giant Facebook is modifying the algorithms to show the posts from Family And Friends on top of the News Feed. This is yet another step by Facebook to enhance the user experience in addition to previous steps. This means that you will see less of the unnecessary shopping ads from different stores and sponsored posts from brands. Videos and public content have been flooding the platform for the past several years and Facebook has finally stepped up to change this trend and move more towards personal connections and interests.

Although the public posts are seen as entertaining and informative they do not do much good for users. The company is finally moving closer to its mission statement.

What's the change and what effect will it have on you?

The new algorithm takes into account the users you have most interacted with in terms of likes, shares and comments and shows more of their posts first. By this change Facebook plans to increase the active usage on the platform (i.e. users will be seeing more interactive posts and fewer posts from publishers, brands and advertisers). This will enable users to spend time in a more meaningful way and show content that they are most interested in. This also means that those viral videos and posts that you did not interact with but became aware of as soon as you opened Facebook will now be seen when you scroll down the feed.

This will lead to a positive impact for users as they interact with each other rather than just passively browsing through public content on the platform.

Also, to let users choose which users they want to see posts from, there is already an existing feature that filters through this. An additional thing to know about this change is that posts that your Facebook connections find interesting will also rise up in prominence in terms of your own feed.

The result

This change may mean that users could spend less time on Facebook since a lot of time is spent watching viral videos. However, Mark Zuckerberg feels that even if users spend less time on the platform, they will feel better about the site, which will actually increase usage in the long run despite being bad for the company in the short run.

We will have to wait and see how these changes will be perceived by the 2 billion active monthly Facebook users.

With things like fake news popping up and advertisers paying to get eyeballs on their content, this will be an interesting direction for the company.