On the Web, news is not just what’s important in your town, state, nation or the whole world, but it’s also what’s important to you, personally. Facebook understands this as well as anyone.
This week, it launched new features that try to focus its users’ New Feeds on news, and in some ways it gets back to the site’s roots. But they also take a page from the old-school medium of newspapers.
Now, stories that Facebook’s algorithms think matter to you will appear at the top of the page from the day before, along with a link to show you more recent stories. In a blog post, Facebook engineering manager Mark Tonkelowitz likens it to scanning the front page of your hometown daily:
When you pick up a newspaper after not reading it for a week, the front page quickly clues you into the most interesting stories. In the past, News Feed hasn’t worked like that. Updates slide down in chronological order so it’s tough to zero in on what matters most.
Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. They’re marked with an easy-to-spot blue corner.
How exactly does Facebook decide what constitutes a story that’s important to you? From Facebook’s Help Topic on the change:
We determine whether something is a top story based on lots of factors, including your relationship to the person who posted the story, how many comments and likes it got, what type of story it is, etc. For example, a friend’s status update that might not normally be a top story may become a top story after many other friends comment on it.
Of course, algorithms don’t always produce human-desirable results. At the top of my story list this morning: My own check-in at the University of Houston (thanks, Facebook, I know I was there!) and a warm/fuzzy cat video from Huffington Post via a friend. Neither of these are exactly news I can use . . .
As is usually the case with Facebook overhauls, it’s getting mixed reviews from its users. Valerie Prilop, a librarian at the University of Houston, doesn’t like what she’s seeing:
Dear Facebook, I usually don’t complain about your changes. They generally don’t bother me. But you are really annoying me these days, especially with your assumptions about which stories I will be most interested in. Guess what? You’re wrong! It’s a lucky thing for you that all my friends are still on Facebook, bringing me back again and again.
Fortunately, you can tweak this, using the dropdown next to items to de-emphasize or even hide them.
Scrolling further down the page, you’ll find recent items from friends, and a “news ticker” on the right provides a summary of friend activity, updated in real time.
These changes are in addition to two major ones from last week. Facebook launched Smart Lists that auto-group your friends into categories, and the addition of Subscribe buttons for following people you may not want to add as friends.
Of course, a lot of this has to do with increased competition from Google+, which yesterday went from being invitation-only to being open to all comers. Google’s new social network, for example, lets you sort your friends into lists so you can control who sees what.
And you can expect more tomorrow from Facebook’s f8 conference, where the social giant is expected to kick off additional changes, including allowing you to share music with friends. Now, what does that remind you of?
