Facebook to deliver more news, fewer memes in News Feed

Facebook to deliver more news, fewer memes in News Feed

The social network says it will push more "high quality" articles in News Feed and occasionally resurface stories with new comments to keep conversations going.

Facebook said Monday that it will start showing members more links to news articles when they visit the social-networking site, especially when they do so from their smartphones. The news-focused alternation marks yet another change to the formula that Facebook uses to pick the content that shows up in the News Feed.

With the adjustment, the social network will attempt to surface more of what it calls "high quality content," or links to newsy articles about current events, sports, or interests. Should a person click on a link to an article, he or she may also find three related articles tacked on to the origin News Feed post, as pictured below.




The change inserts more news into the finite space of News Feed, which means the links will take the space of other content such as meme photos, which will appear less often, the company said. Facebook ultimately believes the algorithmic adjustment will give people more of what they want to see in their News Feed.

"We've noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we're now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile," Facebook Engineering Manager Varun Kacholia and Software Engineer Minwen Ji wrote on the company's blog.
In addition to delivering more news, Facebook said it will start to occasionally resurface stories in News Feed that have new comments to keep conversations going.

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