Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced the end of the Facebook news feed as we know it.
RIP Facebook News
In a nutshell, public brand, page, and publisher publications are significantly reduced by Facebook News Feed.
Here are 10 things you need to know about the next Armageddon news feed.
In the near future, brand and publisher articles will be rated differently from articles posted by friends
Facebook determines the status updates you will see and in which order they appear in your news feed, calculating a post-publication rank score for each status update.
Currently, this algorithm optimizes for time spent on the site and looks at other engagement metrics such as "likes," clicks, comments, and shares of messages. Basically, they want you to stick to Facebook as much as possible.
In the future, the weighting of signals in the news wire algorithm will change dramatically. Messages from family and friends will be much larger, and posts from publisher pages will be deleted, up to 5 times.
Mark Zuckerberg does it to save Facebook
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg acknowledged the damage done by the Facebook community around the world, saying that "Facebook has a lot of work to do" and made his personal challenge for 2018 by repairing his broken website.
The effect on the post engagement will be devastating
Some say that this change is not a big problem, since the reach of Facebook has been declining for many years.
We estimate that at present, the average number of pages per article is about 2 to 5%. This means that if 100 people choose to "like" your page, only 2 to 5 of them will probably see one of your posts.
However, Mark Zuckerberg says that publications from all sides still account for most of the content that people see in their news feeds. This is because publications publish many more updates than regular users each day (for example: 10, 100 or even 1000) per day. So, even if the reach of each post is low, Facebook still generates a tremendous amount of free exposure for brands.
Since Zuckerberg says that they would like most updates to come from friends, we estimate that publishers will see an average 80% reduction in page reach, clicks, and clicks. l & # 39; commitment. We view this as a devastating new reduction in publisher engagement, despite declining engagement rates in recent years.
The time spent on Facebook will fall
Mark Zuckerberg predicts that "by making these changes, I expect people to spend time on Facebook and that certain measures of engagement will decrease".
The price of the ad will go up
Mark adds, "But I'm also expecting the time you spend on Facebook to be more valuable." This is true not only for users, but also for advertisers.
If people spend less time watching funny videos and consuming fake news on Facebook, it means that there will be less advertising inventory to buy. In addition, desperate brands and publishers are likely to spend more on Facebook ads to boost their organic reach. The combination of a decrease in the supply of advertising and increased competition from advertisers will most certainly yield results.
We estimate that advertising costs on Facebook have increased by about 41% over the last year due to the increased popularity of Facebook ads only. The new change could increase the prices of ads substantially in the future.
Facebook recognizes that spending time browsing videos and news on Facebook is bad for your health
Mark Zuckerberg explains that the news feed is bad for your brain: "We feel responsible for ensuring that our services are not only fun to use, but also good for the well-being of people. We have studied this trend carefully by looking at academic research and doing our own research with leading experts in universities.
Research shows that when we use social media to communicate with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less alone, and this is consistent with long-term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, reading articles or watching videos passively – even if they're entertaining or informative – may not be as good.
Publishers who resort to baiting will be punished
Many advertisers urge users to interact with their content with offers that promise a coupon code or other incentives to like publisher publications, in order to fabricate an artificial commitment. In the future, Facebook says that these tactics will result in the demotion of the position.
Meaningful discussion among friends matters the most
Facebook says that "loving" a message is just a passive activity and is therefore a less significant signal to use for ranking purposes. They intend to prioritize messages based on the extent to which the message engenders meaningful discussion, for example, longer responses and subsequent follow-up responses from your friends are types of publications that will succeed.
Users can still view messages from the pages they follow at the top of the news feed
Users wishing to see more posts on the pages that they follow may choose "View First" in the news feed preferences to make sure they see the publications of some pages.
Reissued with permission. Original here.
Photo via Shutterstock