Facebook Tweaks News Feed To Give You More Actual News

Sep 18, 2014 03:24 PM EDT | Jordan Ecarma

Buckle your seatbelts, kids--Facebook is tinkering with its algorithm yet again in an effort to make the world's biggest social network move in something closer to real time.

The company announced today that the News Feed has been updated to reflect news, relevant events and the amount of interactions that posts receive, TechCrunch reported.

In yet another Twitter-esque move, Facebook has updated the News Feed to bring posts that mention trending topics up to the top. The change is intended to increase engagement in real time, software engineer Erich Owens and engineering manager David Vickrey wrote in the announcement.

"We've heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show," said the company blog post. "There are also times when a post that is a day or two old may not be relevant to you anymore."

The update will factor in both trending topics and engagement to bring timely topics higher up on the News Feed and then let them drop off if they stop getting likes and comments. Facebook will also "bump" posts that are popular by bringing them back to the News Feed even when they aren't necessarily timely.

Based on early testing, Facebook has reported an average of 6 percent increased engagement for posts about trending topics, meaning that they received more shares, clicks, likes and comments.  

Owens and Vickrey didn't give a specific timeline of when the change will be implemented, simply saying the update will roll out gradually.

Gigaom pointed out that the News Feed update could be a response to criticism that Facebook received when ice bucket challenge videos overwhelmed news about recent events in Ferguson on the social network.

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