Facebook tweaks news feed in bid to boost user activity

Facebook has introduced yet another twist to its news feed algorithm, to highlight call to action and relevant content.

With this update, the algorithm would rank Facebook posts on two parameters — the probability of users clicking or liking the content and the ranking given to a content if users want to see more of such stories/content.

"News feed will begin to look at both, the probability that you would want to see the story at the top of your feed and the probability that you will like, comment on, click or share a story. We will rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see near the top of their News Feed", noted, software engineers at Facebook, Cheng Zhang and Si Chen, in a blog post.

The rationale for this update is to encourage user activity. The social media major, which claims 1.59 billion users, wants increased activity such as clicking, liking or sharing the posts with other Facebook friends, than simple consumption of the content. The higher "likes" and the ranking of the content, higher the likelihood of a call to action.

While this tweak would change the page likes and referral significantly, it might bring momentary changes to the traffic. Pages might need to exercise some caution since positioning of the content in the tweaked news feed will be highly dependent on one's followers and activity.

In the blog post, Facebook warned pages about getting higher clicks on certain content. Considering the dual factors, if there is discrepancy in the number of stories being clicked and the number of people wanting to see those stories, referral traffic could decline.

Facebook has been constantly working on its algorithm. Earlier the algorithm would allow users to decide what and whose content they would want to "See First" and at the top of the feed. The algorithm was dictated by various factors such as the likes and importance of content/person for the user and more.