Your Facebook feed it set to look a lot different, thanks to the sweeping changes that Founder Mark Zuckerberg has introduced to the social media platform. According to a report by New York Times, Facebook has introduced major changes to what kinds of posts, videos and photos its members will see most often by prioritizing what a user’s friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.
This would mean that over the next few weeks, users to start to see lesser viral videos and news articles shared by media companies and see more of posts from your friends and family, especially those that many have liked or commented on.
In an interview with NYT, Zuckerberg said that he closely looked at which posts were stressing or harming users and decided to reduce such content. The idea behind the changes is to increase content with meaningful interaction on the social media site
In a Facebook post, he further added that he wants to ensure ‘the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent’. For this, content that sparks conversations among family and friends who use the site will be emphasized.
"We've gotten feedback from our community that public content - posts from businesses, brands and media - is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other… Video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years. Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do -- help us connect with each other,” Zuckerberg said in his post.
BBC reports that this would mean that organisations on Facebook may see the popularity of their posts decrease.
Even the public content that will be shown on timelines will be the ones that encourage meaningful interactions between people.
“For example, there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We've seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience,” Zuckerberg adds.
While Zuckerberg admits that these changes are likely to bring down some measures of engagement, he says that ‘doing the right thing’ will be good for the community and the business over the long term.