Facebook Changes How They Rank Videos in the News Feed

A couple weeks ago I posted about how Facebook is making some changes to how they rank content in users’ News Feeds. Now in addition to likes, comments and shares, Facebook will take into account how long a user spends reading a post. Yesterday Facebook announced that they would be making similar changes to how they rank video content.

According to their blog, Facebook will be factoring in actions on videos, such as activating audio or switching to a full screen view. The idea behind this change is that even though a user may not explicitly ‘like’ a post, it doesn’t mean that the user didn’t find the post interesting. These additional ‘implicit’ signals can help Facebook better understand which videos should be included in a user’s News Feed.

This news comes a little over a year after Facebook made the decision to adjust the number of videos that appeared in users’ Feeds. This change made it so a user that generally skipped over video content, would see less videos in their News Feed, while users who watched videos more frequently could expect to see more videos, towards the top of their Feed. This all sounds like great news – if it really works.

Back in January I made the decision to disable my company Facebook page. I’ve worked with clients that have seen great results on Facebook, but I didn’t see much value there for my personal brand. It always seemed like I was talking to an empty room. In fact, Twitter is the only social network I’ve found effective for marketing my business. Instead of wasting time and resources on Facebook, I decided to take it out to pasture.

However, after seeing the direction Facebook has been heading lately, I’m beginning to reconsider my decision. Facebook is way over-cluttered with content, and the content we actually see in our News Feed doesn’t always align with our interests. But if Facebook can figure out a practical way to de-clutter our News Feeds, then they might not only win over consumers, but also brands that are trying to use social media to market their products and services.