The world’s biggest social networking giant yesterday has made changes which decreases dependency on “referral” traffic — or the sharing of news articles or other content. “The goal of News Feed is to show you the content that matters to you,” said a blog post by Facebook’s Max Eulenstein and Lauren Scissors. One of the important changes aims “to ensure that content posted directly by the friends you care about, such as photos, videos, status updates or links, will be higher up in News Feed so you are less likely to miss it,” the blog said. Facebook will shift items such as commentary on a news story or another person’s post lower down to make room. “Many people have told us they don’t enjoy seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post,” Facebook said. “This update will make these stories appear lower down in News Feed or not at all, so you are more likely to see the stuff you care about directly from friends and the pages you have liked.” In other words, you will now be able to see posts from a friend or a source in a row when there are no new posts made by your other friends. Facebook is doing away with the rule that prevented people from seeing multiple posts from the same source. Eulenstein and Scissors wrote that this change is aimed at “improving the experience for people who don’t have a lot of content available to see.” “Previously, we had rules in place to prevent you from seeing multiple posts from the same source in a row. With this update, we are relaxing this rule. Now if you run out of content, but want to spend more time in News Feed, you’ll see more.” These changes will ensure that posts from brands and web publishers take a backseat and that your Facebook page is, ultimately, more about you. Any change in Facebook’s designs is likely to cause waves across the web. Facebook is in talks with the publishers/media organizations to host their content directly on the site to target news at specific readers.
