Facebook’s latest update to News Feed sees an 8 per cent increase in engagement with Pages
Facebook has explained how News Feed works, and what it will be doing to improve the experience moving forward, with early tests showing increased engagement from users.
At the event in its Menlo Park headquarters, Facebook revealed that its average user has 1,500 pieces of information which could run through their News Feed on a given day, but only 300 of these stories will show up based on an algorithm which considered factors such as previous interactions and what how your friends have interacted with a post or page.
Today, Facebook announced an update to this ranking algorithm - 'Story Bumping'.
Now stories that people did not scroll down far enough to see will now reappear near the top of News Feed if the stories are still getting lots of likes and comments.
In a recent test with a small number of users, this change resulted in a 5 per cent increase in the number of likes, comments and shares on the organic stories people saw from friends and an 8 per cent increase in likes, comments and shares on the organic stories they saw from Pages
Previously, people read 57 per cent of the stories in their News Feeds, on average. They did not scroll far enough to see the other 43 per cent. When the unread stories were resurfaced, the fraction of stories read increased to 70 per cent.
It also announced the roll out of 'Last Actor', which looks at the 50 people you most recently interacted with on the site and then shows you more of them in your feed in the short-term.