Your News Feed is getting a major overhaul, according to a post on the Facebook Newsroom blog Thursday. The company announced several improvements to "reduce stories that people frequently tell us are spammy and that they don't want to see."
The post detailed three major ways the company plans to clean up the News Feed:
- Reducing "like-baiting," or posts that endorse liking or commenting as a way to game the News Feed algorithm, which rewards posts with more engagement with a more prominent spot in the Feed.
- Reducing "frequently circulated content," meaning that viral video that everyone shared won't show up twice in your Feed.
- Ditching "spammy links," so any stories that mislead users into clicking on links that lead to only advertisements or other spam are wiped from the News Feed altogether.
Who wouldn't want a Facebook feed with fewer obnoxious posts? Here's Facebook's example of a "like-baiting" post. It's actually baiting shares and comments, too.
The updates will likely make for a better experience for users, who will enjoy an increase in content that they actually care about. But what about brands?
According to Facebook, they should be OK, as long as they're not relying on spam as a way to spread their content. But as Business Insider points out, this is just the latest move in Facebook's ongoing war against boring content, one that many brands are finding it difficult to win. In fact, a blog post by Forrester analyst Nate Elliot encouraged brands to stop allocating portions of their marketing budget to Facebook.