Weird!? — Facebook has changed their News Feed algorithm again 😯, will impact publisher traffic 😅

OMG kids! Facebook is building a better News Feed, and apparently that includes less content from publishers and more content from friends and family!

As a content connoisseur, I cannot for the life of me understand why!

😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨😁😳😯😨

Here’s Adam Mosseri, VP, Product Management, News Feed, explaining the platform as it currently stands in a blog post:

…stories in News Feed are ranked […] so that people can see what they care about first, and don’t miss important stuff from their friends. If the ranking is off, people don’t engage, and leave dissatisfied. So one of our most important jobs is getting this ranking right.

But maybe News Feed isn’t fulfilling its original purpose:

Our success is built on getting people the stories that matter to them most. If you could look through thousands of stories every day and choose the 10 that were most important to you, which would they be? The answer should be your News Feed. It is subjective, personal, and unique — and defines the spirit of what we hope to achieve.

So Facebook will soon start boosting posts from friends and family more seriously.

From the New York Times:

The side effect of those changes, the company said, is that content posted by publishers will show up less prominently in news feeds, resulting in significantly less traffic to the hundreds of news media sites that have come to rely on Facebook.

Facebook is one of the biggest drivers in web traffic, and publishers have noticed. There are now dedicated social media editors who specifically curate their publication pages to squeeze the most traffic out of News Feed. Publishers also now use Facebook’s algorithm to guide editorial itself.

But as the company has also seen, the current publisher-heavy mix is impacting original sharing.

As of mid-2015, Facebook saw a year-over-year decline of 21 percent when it came to original sharing from actual users.

So while this change to News Feed may increase the amount of posts you see from friends, Facebook is also facing a chicken-and-egg problem with original content.

Seeing more posts from friends could encourage more people to share their own stories, but at the same time a 21 percent decline shows that people aren’t just slowing their use of Facebook as a place for sharing, some are clearly stopping altogether. And there’s no algorithm that will fix such a substantial decline in user sharing.