Facebook tweaks News Feed, adds new algorithm to serve up high quality content
The usefulness of Facebook's News Feed ranking algorithm may not be universally agreed upon, but the social network's dedication to improving it is unquestionable. Today, FB has updated that ranking system with a newly developed algorithm meant to better surface "high quality content" from pages users are connected to at the top of News Feed. To do so, the algorithm makes determinations about what content is timely, relevant, from trusted sources and is likely to be shared -- and also identifying content that users complain about seeing or attempts to "game News Feed" distribution with solicited likes. These signals were informed by the results from surveying a few thousand users, and after implementation in a small scale test, Facebook found folks sharing, liking and commenting on more stories, and hiding fewer of them. As such, we can all expect to see the update in the next few weeks, so brace for a Facebook flood of insightful stories, funny cat videos, or whatever else it is you're into.
