Facebook Updates Its News Feed Algorithm to Give Preference to Live Video

Social network continues to bet on real time

In another sign that Facebook is increasingly betting on real-time video, the social network said its algorithm will now give more preference to video that is live than video that is not.

In a blog post published Tuesday, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said people spend on average three times as much time watching Facebook Live video as they spend watching other video content. According to the company, the update is not expected to significantly affect Pages.

"Now that more and more people are watching Live videos, we are considering Live Videos as a new content type—different from normal videos—and learning how to rank them for people in News Feed," wrote Facebook product managers Vibhi Kant and Jie Xu.

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