Ahead of Facebook’s F8 developer conference, the social giant has rolled out a major update today to the way users view content in the News Stream. For journalists, there are a few key differences: some good, some bad.
1. Fewer “Top Stories” in the News Stream
Prior to the changes, the Facebook News Stream gave users an option to view “Top Stories” or “Most Recent”. The new view combines the two into a single stream and does not give viewers the option. As a result, fewer “Top Stories” appear in each user’s News Stream. Doing the math, this obviously means less opportunity for your newsroom’s post to appear in your fan’s stream.
What your newsroom can do:
- High engagement (likes+comments) are even more important than ever. This is the only chance you’ll have to get your post into one of the coveted the “Top Stories” slots of the News Stream. Be sure to follow best practices for increasing engagement.
- This is a fairly obvious attempt to challenge Google Plus, since the updated News Stream functions more like the G+ Stream. Take a cue from Facebook and don’t ignore new social platforms.
2. More “Recent” Content in the News Stream
The old News Stream defaulted to the “Top Stories” which is why the “Most Recent” feed was rarely seen by users. The new News Stream is much more focused on real-time updates. This can be a positive change for newsrooms. In a breaking news situation, your real-time updates are now much more likely to be seen in the News Stream immediately. The old News Stream would often hide a breaking news post until it had enough engagement (likes+comments) to warrant becoming part of the “Top Stories.”
What your newsroom can do:
- Post breaking news as it happens. Understand that more Facebook users will now see your “Recent Posts” in real-time.
- Facebook’s own calculation on best practices for frequency will likely change with the new News Stream. Up to now, they recommended 5-10 posts per day for max engagement. But the new stream seems to reward quantity over quality (in the same way Google+ does). So I wouldn’t be surprised to see this number go (way) up.
3. Larger Images
You’ve probably noticed some posts now have much larger images. The new News Stream is giving rich-media posts made from personal profiles a larger footprint. (Note: Images attached to posts made from Fan Pages are not enlarged in the same way.) Savvy journalists can take advantage of this increased real estate by enabling the new subscription button on their personal profile and posting news-related images from their own personal profiles to their public subscribers.
This update to the News Stream will likely have major reprocussions for news orgs on Facebook; and it will take some time to get used to. As usual, there’s an instant outcry agains the changes. What do you think? Good or bad?
Update: Adds Vadim Lavrusik from Facebook in comments: “I think the interpretation if the changes are highly inaccurate and lack an understanding of the change and how the News Feed functions. Users aren’t seeing fewer top stories, they are seeing more. The News Feed repopulates more top stories and shows them to users as they are available at the top.
Recent stories are still filtered for quality (not just all about quantity). The ticker is raw and showing you everything in real-time. In reality, news is now getting more exposure in the News Feed because we are also clustering related stories. So if you are connected to multiple journalists and news organizations who have posted about the same topic, you will see it in a big cluster, which makes those stories much more prominent then if they were on their own.
Also, this post fails to neglect a critical piece, the News Feed learns from you. If you mark something as a top story, say a big news event posted by a news organization, the News Feed will learn that you find this kind of news important and will show more of it to you in the future.
The entire premise about quantity vs. quality is wrong here. Quality still wins and gets more prominence, but now the News Feed is designed so that you do see recent stories as they happen more than you did before.”