Facebook Tweaks News Feed for More 'High Quality' Content

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By Kurt Wagner2013-12-02 22:40:30 UTC

Facebook updated its News Feed algorithm yet again, this time with the hope of presenting users with more "high quality content" like news articles and current events.

The updated algorithm means that users can expect more news and story links to appear in News Feeds, especially on mobile, wrote Varun Kacholia, an engineering manager, and Minwen Ji, a software engineer, on the company's blog Monday.

See also: Facebook: Here's How Your News Feed Works

Stories and posts that a user's friends have commented on may be bumped back to the top of her News Feed, an effort at creating more conversation around articles in the comments, the duo wrote. This means you may see the same story numerous times, the only change being new comments from your friends.

Logic says that if the platform adds more links, then something else has to be dialed back. On Facebook, the odd man out appears to be memes.

"Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile," the duo wrote on the company blog. "This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently."

Facebook will also begin recommending related articles to users who click on a link from their feed. These recommendations will appear below the original post.

The updates are a reflection of Facebook's continued push to make the platform the place to go to stay up-to-date on what's happening around you. The company announced in October that Facebook's referral traffic to news publications was up 170% in 2012, meaning more people are clicking on articles than ever before.

A Pew Research study released in October found that 30% of U.S adults get news on Facebook, and more than three quarters of those consumers get news while on the site for other reasons. This is where the article recommendations come into play.

Facebook is primarily competing with Twitter to be the social network of choice for news consumption, but other social networks, including LinkedIn and Pinterest, have also made serious changes in an attempt to join the discussion.

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Image: Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images, Facebook

Topics: algorithm, Facebook, news feed, quality content, Social Media