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Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#21

Post by dredmorbius »

sharkweek wrote: post #18

As someone who runs a niche news site, it's hard to see the point focusing on running a Facebook page anymore. We kind of go through the motions to keep up with appearances, but Facebook is less than 5% of our total overall traffic, and 95% of that portion is all from individuals sharing our content, not from our page directly. It's just impossible to "bid" on traffic via Facebook and win out over companies that have…

What's your leading source of traffic? Is it Facebook in aggregate, some other site, or variable?

Just because your FB shares don't directly feed your traffic doesn't mean they're useless. You might try A/B tracking on promoting stories through FB or not, and see how they track for views.

(Though I've also had experiences with organic spread of stories -- sometimes something just hits a nerve and balloons.)

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#22

Post by tyfon »

itchyouch wrote: post #12
NegativeLatency wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I've been alienated, and many of my non techie friends have been too, but the network effect is just too strong and pulls you back in when old-so-and-so plans their birthday party or whatever.

That's it. I use it purely for answering invitations to events and a handy address book. Otherwise my social media time is away from FB, though, I still spend time on FB in the form of Instagram.

I deleted my FB account several years ago and you'd be surprised how many actually find my email when they want to invite me for something. If someone can't be bothered to send me an email I'm not too concerned about going to their party.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#23

Post by School-Cotton »

muglug wrote: post #7

Tech companies have demonstrated over and over that they love to flirt with journalism, but they never want to commit (a notable exception is Amazon's Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post[1]). I hope this encourages news organisations to disentangle themselves from tech companies as fast as possible. [1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/washington-post...

Jeff owns the Washington Post in his capacity as a private individual. It's not affiliated with Amazon at all.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#24

Post by rokhayakebe »

sharkweek wrote: post #18

As someone who runs a niche news site, it's hard to see the point focusing on running a Facebook page anymore. We kind of go through the motions to keep up with appearances, but Facebook is less than 5% of our total overall traffic, and 95% of that portion is all from individuals sharing our content, not from our page directly. It's just impossible to "bid" on traffic via Facebook and win out over companies that have…

Today I saw someone spend about 3 hours or more on Facebook (mobile): my new flatmate.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#25

Post by adrianratnapala »

ryanSrich wrote: post #17
itchyouch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's it. I use it purely for answering invitations to events and a handy address book. Otherwise my social media time is away from FB, though, I still spend time on FB in the form of Instagram.

Interesting. I don't think I've ever used Facebook for anything productive (like RSVPing to something). My newsfeed is a complete and utter wasteland, but there's something interesting and addicting about it. It's like watching a car wreck. It's awful, but you can't look away.

I find Facebook pages visually ugly -- unpleasant to look at at a level that has nothing to do with my opinions about the site.

But that's just me. I find that British tabloids like the Sun look similar -- and they are designed that way to attract rather than repel eyeballs.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#26

Post by artpepper »

system16 wrote: post #11

I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because - anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content (usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probab…

Yeah, at some point my FB feed became dominated by links to other sites, essentially not much different than Upworthy.

Like you, I found myself doing the "quick scroll through" until I finally deactivated my account.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#27

Post by yeukhon »

danso wrote: post #5

Smart move by Facebook...though I say that as someone who, when I want the news, I use Twitter or HN, or direct visits to newsites. FB is where I go to keep up with what my friends are doing. Not so great a move if you're a news publisher who has invested time in optimizing your reach on Facebook, though...

Look at the bright side. If people leave facebook because they don't see friends' and family's photo, but ads and ads and ads, then the number of active users will decline and facebook will eventually become nothing.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#28

Post by 0x0 »

system16 wrote: post #11

I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because - anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content (usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probab…

I found I get a much more interesting "news feed" in the iOS app by searching for "Posts by my friends". Gives you a long scroll view with none of the Pages fluff.

Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family

#30

Post by Thlom »

system16 wrote: post #11

I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because - anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content (usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probab…

Yeah. When you are "friends" with your grandmother, boss, Mary from elementary school and your ex's mother you won't share that much. And those who will share anything in that kind of environment are the people you don't want to hear from ...

Yes, you can group your friends and just share with some of them, but who has time for that?

I'm even hesitant to write anything in semi-open groups as I'm not sure if what I write will show up on my friends wall. It's not like what I'm writing is extreme or private, I just don't need it to be actively shared with all my "friends.

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