Facebook News Feed Changes: Eliminating Click Bait While Providing Better Stream Of Information

Facebook is making changes to its News Feed as a way to better manage the stream of information seen and accessed by users on their accounts.

According to Value Walk, the world's leading social networking site is specifically working on eliminating Click Bait by introducing an update to its News Feed algorithm. 

Click Bait has been a bane among users, as they are "baited" to click, and subsequently, are directed to sites they don't actually want to visit.

Facebook announced the News Feed changes right after the networking giant conducted a survey among a thousand users to find out the content they actually wanted to see.

Based on the survey conducted by the Feed Quality Panel, it was learned that the stories that were liked, shared and clicked on were not the only items that did well on the site.

In fact, the Facebook survey found out that even though there was no interaction on some posts, users still enjoyed them.

In a blog post, Facebook software engineer Cheng Zhang, explained that the Feed Quality Panel surveys thousands of people each day  "to learn more about how well we're ranking each person's feed."

By and large, the Facebook News Feed changes were based on the answers provided by users when they were asked the question, "how much did you want to see this story in your News Feed?"

"From this research using a representative sample of people, we are able to better understand which stories people would be interested in seeing near the top of their News Feed even if they choose not to click, like or comment on them - and use this information to make ranking changes,"  Zhang said.

"We saw through our research that people reported having a better News Feed experience when the stories they see at the top are stories they are both likely to rate highly if asked and likely to engage with," he added.

However, Zhang pointed out that the impact of the Facebook News Feed changes on a story's distribution "will vary depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity."