When the news was out that Facebook would implement changes on its news feed, it raises serious issues from the media and publishers. But the social media giant said that its latest algorithm would not cause any detrimental effects.
Facebook earlier said that it would tweak its algorithm to further highlights the content shared by families and friends. The company called this as “meaningful social interactions”, but nobody knows how these would affect all users connected by Facebook.
Facebook Tweak In Algorithm Will Bring More Traffic To Pages?
But a Facebook official allayed fears of the publishers, saying that a tweak at Facebook’s algorithm could actually bring more traffic to pages or groups.
Adam Mosseri, Facebook vice president of Newsfeed, confirmed this in an interview with Stratechery.
“So if you and I had a back and forth conversation on a post from a Page, that would actually count as a meaningful social interaction,” Mosseri told Stratechery. “So it’s more about the interactions between people and less about just the consumption of content from friends,” he added.
He added that the recent decision of Facebook to tweak its algorithm was not to combat “fake news.” He said that the social media observed that more videos were posted on the platform.
Hence, he stressed that it wants to ensure that the flood of contents wouldn’t overwhelm the social interactions, a philosophy that Facebook espoused since its inception.
“Video by nature is very passive,” Mosseri said. “So while you’re watching a video on Facebook you don’t tend to comment a lot, like a lot, or talk with your friends a lot, or read articles for that matter.”
“So we hope that the time spent on Facebook, though overall it will go down, is time well-spent or time better spent,” Mosseri said.
