BackFacebook News Feed gives you more control
The News Feed gives users the option to decide what they see, and this is critical data for Facebook's future monetization plans
PremiumFacebook is now offering users greater control over what shows up on their News Feed, and what doesn’t. As of 10 July, the News Feed personalization controls are rolling out for Apple iOS users, and will be available on Android and the web sometime in the next few weeks.
The social network giant says these tools “actively shape and improve the experience." In a nutshell, it allows users to select which friends and pages show up when they log in, right down to micro-managing even the priority of whose update shows up first. Additionally, there is a feature that will make it easier for users to discover new pages that they may like to follow.
The secret calculation
At the moment, Facebook is doing an automatic ranking, based on a complex algorithm, which is shrouded in secrecy. This algorithm selects the order of stories shown to each user, based on the user’s previous interaction on the social network—this would include comments, liking a post, sharing someone else’s update and even how long you currently view a particular post or photo. Facebook shares absolutely no details on how you see what you see (and what you don’t). Those patterns, preferences, and behaviours are analyzed to show you more of the same, including targeted advertisements.
DEMYSTIFYING THE NEW SETTINGS
Select friends and Pages to see first: Users can now select which friends and Pages they would like to see at the top of the News Feed. In the News Feed Preferences, tap on a friend’s profile picture to enable a star. Once done, any updates or posts from them since you last logged on to Facebook, will show first—top placement for that content, before the rest of the riffraff shows up. Once the user has scrolled through these, the rest of the News Feed shows up as it always has. There is no doubt that this will streamline what you see, and what you want to see. If you give the top billing for friends who talk about sports, someone ranting about the season finale of Game of Thrones will not spoil the flow.
Select who to follow or unfollow: It is now easier to unfollow one or a bunch of friends, Pages or groups if you don’t want to see their updates. Equally, you can re-follow friends or pages you may have unfollowed earlier.
Find new Pages to connect to: This feature suggests more Pages, perhaps from another media house or gadget company, based on the pages you have already liked.
Is it just about more control?
By releasing these detailed personalization tools, Facebook wants to create an impression that people now have greater control over what they see. While that may actually be true to a certain extent, it is actually Facebook which is gaining more out of this. Every single preference logged by every single user is essentially more data for Facebook with to map back to you, and enhance your virtual personality—likes, interests, close friends, what you don’t like etc. With this information, Facebook will be able to monetize features such as pages. Remember Instant Articles? This ties in beautifully with that, not only allowing Facebook to enhance the content on Instant Articles, but also the upper hand when it comes to renegotiating contracts with publishers. Secondly, Facebook can now go to an advertiser and tell them that their advert will show up to an even more specific target audience, which again gives it the upper hand.
We have seen this before
Back in November 2014, Facebook had rolled out the feature that allowed users to hide particular posts—the direct result was that you would see lesser updates from that friend or page. That filter has been given a boost with the News Feed preferences.
In the end, do remember that everything you do, Facebook knows.
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