A new twist to Facebook's News Feed targets to answer the different issues of seeing days-old statuses and posts on the users' wall. On Thursday, Erich Owens and David Vickrey recognized that the News Feed is not always as fresh as it should be, they said:
"Our goal with News Feed is to show everyone the right content at the right time so they don't miss the stories that are important to them. We've heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a Page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show. There are also times when a post that is a day or two old may not be relevant to you anymore. Our latest update to News Feed ranking looks at two new factors to determine if a story is more important in the moment than other types of updates."
As component of the update, Facebook will provide more focus to posts that are on the trending list, such as a page or friend you are associated to posts on something that is presently a conversation or a hot topic on Facebook that is more likely, post seems to be on the News Feed, so it can be seen sooner. There was a 6% jump in engagement after the testing. Perhaps the biggest change to Facebook News Feed is about the relevance of the posts:
"The second update takes into account the rate at which people are liking or commenting on a post. Currently one of the signals we look at is the total number of likes that a post has received when determining how high up to to show it in News Feed. With this update, we are going to begin looking at when people are choosing to like, comment and share.
If people are engaging with the post right after it is posted, and not as much a few hours later, this suggests that the post was most interesting at the time it was posted, but potentially less interesting at a later date. Based on this signal it is more likely to appear higher in News Feed earlier on and lower at a later date."
The timeliness will also affect which posts get a "bump" in News Feed.
