Did you know Facebook has been taking surveys for the past two years? You might have also answered a few without your knowledge. Well, these feedbacks are to make improvements in the News feed rankings.
Facebook has been working behind the scene in bringing valuable posts in News feeds from friends, groups and pages a user follows, which matters the most.
Facebook uses an algorithm that fetches posts and ranks using thousands of signals based on what a user would prefer to see.
For instance, if you are someone who is more into trending news then Facebook algorithm reads your interest using your previous views and visit to pages and update your news feed with the current happenings in the world on top of every other News feeds.
“This spring, we’re expanding on our work to use direct feedback from people who use Facebook to understand the content people find most valuable. And we’ll continue to incorporate this feedback into our News Feed ranking process.” – Facebook
“Is this post Worth Your Time?” in Facebook
Earlier in 2019, Facebook started conducting surveys to find out what amuses the users in their News feed and Facebook started showing what users wanted to see in their News feeds. The survey starts with a simple Yes or No question. If you continue with Yes then Facebook will give you a few questions to be answered whereas if you answer No then the survey won’t show up on your screen. Using these responses the algorithm will be updated.
Facebook has also been keeping track to post that yours share, comment and like the most. By this way, they can get into the shoes of the audience and find the interest and dislikes of the user.
“Now, we’re building on these surveys by asking new questions about the content people find valuable as well as the content people don’t enjoy seeing in their News Feed.” – Facebook
Facebook Feedback driven Signals
Facebook has informed that in the upcoming months they will be using various signals to make News feeds with the content of their interest.
How much were you inspired by this post?
People have been showing more interest towards News feed contents that are more inspirational and uplifting which has motivated them even outside Facebook walls. For instance, the post about volunteering to stay at home and stay safe has motivated many people to stay home rather than being outside roaming. This has also become awareness. The News feed about planting trees has also made a huge impact among people to plant at least a single sampling in their backyard.
Facebook has been and will be running a series of tests globally to find the posts that are more inspirational and is working on to bring up such content on top of your News feeds.
How much interested are you in a certain topic?
Have you come across a question that pops up after watching a video or a post in your News feed saying whether you want to watch more videos similar to this?
Facebook wants to know whether the content shared by your friends or any page you follow is relevant or irrelevant to your watch field. So to know this Facebook has set another signal to check if the content was good and your choice to watch similar posts on your News feed.
“To address this, we’ll ask people whether they want to see more or fewer posts about a certain topic, such as Cooking, Sports or Politics, and based on their collective feedback, we’ll aim to show people more content about the topics they’re more interested in, and show them fewer posts about topics they don’t want to see.” – Facebook
Facebook Posts with Negative Experience
Facebook keeps getting feedbacks from users saying they get more politics and other kinds of content those are not much of an interest, some may even distract users from leaving the News feeds. Facebook will be working on it in the upcoming days in reducing content that gives a negative experience to its users.
“For example, we’ll look at posts with lots of angry reactions and ask people what kinds of posts they may want to see less of.” – Facebook
Hide a Facebook post
Facebook has given the option to the users to hide a post if they are not interested to it. Well, now Facebook is about to make it more prominent. So if you encounter posts that are disturbing or irrelevant or irritating, you will be able to hide the post by clicking on to the “X” on the upper right corner of that post. In the future, Facebook will provide you with an option to hide posts similar to them.
Coming to an end, the company has been showing more curiosity towards user interest to identify the value of the content and the ones that are not. Apart from these surveys, post engagement is also an important signal that is been used to rank posts on News feeds. Therefore, with these tests, in the upcoming days, the News feeds will have valuable and inspiring content that match user interest.
