Facebook Changes News Feed Algorithm By Timing Read Articles

Facebook has made changes to how its News Feed works by taking into account how long a person looks at an article. The world’s largest social network has tweaked its algorithm to ensure that users receive content they actually want to read and to reduce clutter popping up on News Feeds. The real motivation may be ad revenue, but it’s always pushed as more relevant content. Beta News reports: The most recent update to the feed algorithm will take into account not only which news articles people click on, but how long they spend reading them. This will help Facebook to not only determine what sort of article interest users but also help the social network to identify clickbait that doesn’t deliver what it promises. Apparently students of the bleeding obvious, Facebook says “we’re learning that the time people choose to spend reading or watching content they clicked on from News Feed is an important signal that the story was interesting to them”. With this in mind, the social network will now predict how long it thinks you’ll spend reading a particular article, and use this factor to determine its placement (or not) in your News Feed. In a blog post [...]