I don’t consider myself a big Facebook user, but I do check it from time to time. I live across the country from a lot of friends and family, so it’s nice to see how they’re doing every now and then. And for the most part, I don’t mind the social network, except for the stupid News Feed.
It seems like every time I login, it’s serving up posts in a different way, when I’d really just like them to be in chronological order. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s about to change again. Facebook announced this morning that it’s rolling out a new News Feed story bumping feature…
Here’s the announcement from Facebook’s Lars Backstrom:
“Starting today, we’re going to try and change that. News Feed FYI blog posts, beginning with this one, will highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the thinking behind them…
Today we are announcing an update to the News Feed ranking algorithm. Now organic stories that people did not scroll down far enough to see can reappear near the top of News Feed if the stories are still getting lots of likes and comments.”
Facebook says that early data has proven that the new story bumping feature improves the News Feed experience. In a recent test with a small number of users, it says the change resulted in a 5% increase in the number of likes, comments and shares on organic stories from Pages.
The social network also says that moving forward, it will try to be more transparent regarding the changes it’s making to its News Feed. The goal, it says, is to continue improving the stream and user experience—which we all know is code for “increase activity for more ad money.”
Story bumping has already been launched on the web, and will be rolling out to mobile in the coming weeks.
What do you think of this new News Feed feature? Will it be an improvement?